In the Kitchen: A Novel

By Monica Ali

This "mesmerizing" (Entertainment Weekly) novel from Booker Prize-shortlisted author Monica Ali brings us into the vivid world of a London restaurant.

Gabriel Lightfoot, an enterprising man from a northern English mill town, is making good in London. As executive chef at the once-splendid Imperial Hotel, he aims to run a tight kitchen. Though he’s under constant challenge from the competing demands of an exuberantly multinational staff, a gimlet-eyed hotel management, and business partners with whom he is secretly planning a move to a restaurant of his own, all Gabe’s hard work looks set to pay off.

Until, that is, a worker is found dead in the kitchen’s basement. It is a small death, a lonely death—but it is enough to disturb the tenuous balance of Gabe’s life.

Enter Lena, an eerily attractive young woman with mysterious ties to the dead man. Under her spell, Gabe makes a decision, the consequences of which strip him naked and change the course of the life he knows—and the future he thought he wanted.

With prose that "crackles with verve and vivacity" (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel) and "a truly Dickensian cast of characters" (The Buffalo News), Ali’s "portrait of a middle-aged Holden Caulfield wandering the streets" (The Plain Dealer) is a sheer pleasure to read.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Scribner
• Release date: Jun 16, 2009
• ISBN: 9781416579007

Monica Ali

Monica Ali was born in Dhaka, Bangladesh, and grew up in England. She was named one of the 20 best young British novelists under 40 by Granta. She is the author of four previous novels, including Untold Story and Brick Lane, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Guardian Book Prize, nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and was named a winner of the 2003 Discover Award for Fiction and a New York Times Editors’ Choice Book that same year. She lives in London with her husband and two children.

Book preview

One

When he looked back, he felt that the death of the Ukrainian was the point at which things began to fall apart. He could not say that it was the cause, could not say, even, that it was a cause, because the events that followed seemed to be both inevitable and entirely random, and although he could piece together a narrative sequence and take a kind of comfort in that, he had changed sufficiently by then to realize that it was only a story he could tell, and that stories were not, on the whole, to be trusted. Nevertheless, he fixed the beginning at the day of the Ukrainian’s death, when it was the following day on which, if a life can be said to have a turning point, his own began to spin.

On that morning in late October, Gleeson, the restaurant manager, sat down with Gabriel for their regular meeting. He had mislaid, so it seemed, his oily professional charm.

You do realize it’s on your patch, said Gleeson. You realize that, yes?

It was the first time that Gabe had seen him slip out of character. And the night porter certainly was on Gabe’s patch. What, in that case, was worrying Gleeson? In this business, until you could see all the angles, it was better to keep your mouth shut. Gabe tapped the neck of the crystal vase that sat on the table between them. Plastic flowers, he said, are for Happy Eaters and funeral parlors.

Gleeson scratched his scalp and fleetingly examined his fingernails. Yes or no, Chef? Yes or no? His eyes were pale blue and disreputably alert. His hair, by contrast, he wore with a sharp side part and a fervid rectitude, as if all his phony honor depended on it.

Gabe looked across the empty restaurant, over the pink-tinged table linens and leather-backed chairs, the silver that glinted here and there in the shreds of autumn sun, the chandelier, ugly as a bejeweled dowager, the polished oak bar that, without a single elbow propped on it, was too dark and infected with loneliness to look at for very long. In the circumstances, he decided, it was unwise to concede anything at all. The food and beverage meeting, three months ago, at least. You agreed, no more plastic flowers.

They’re silk, said Gleeson smartly. Silk, please. I have never had plastic in my restaurant.

Now that I think about it, said Gabe, there were some other things…

Chef. Gleeson laced his fingers together. You are a straight talker. I am a straight talker. Let’s not beat around the bush. He tilted his head and sieved the words through a smile. It was how he greeted diners, gliding in with hands clasped and head cocked. "A dead body on the premises. This is hardly the time to be discussing pepper pots." His tone was both ingratiating and contemptuous, the one reserved for the pretheater crowd, tourists, and anyone—easily identified by the way they kept looking around—who had been saving up.

For God’s sake, Stanley. They took him away.

Really? said Gleeson. Really? They took him away? Well. That settles everything. How stupid of me to waste your time. He got up. I’m telling you, Chef…listen… He stared at Gabe and then shook his head. Shit. He adjusted his cuff links and stalked off, muttering, quivering like a cat’s tail.

Gabe went back to his office and pulled out the banqueting file. He shuffled the papers and found the sheet he wanted. Sirovsky Product Launch. Under the Menu heading, Oona had written Canapés: spring rolls, smoked salmon, quiche squares, guacamole, vol-au-vents (prawn), mini-choc mousses. Her handwriting was maddeningly childish. To look at it made you think of her sucking the end of her pencil. He put a thick black line through the list. He checked the per-head budget, staff resource, and comments sections. Let’s put out all the flags on this one. Mr. Maddox was taking a special interest. Put out all the flags. What did that mean? Caviar and truffle oil? Stuff the profit and loss? Gabe sighed. Whatever it meant, it wasn’t quiche squares and prawn vol-au-vents.

The office was a white stud-walled cubicle in the corner of the kitchen, with a surfeit of air-conditioning ducts and a window over the battlefield. Apart from Gabe’s desk and chair, the filing cabinet, and a stand for the printer, there was room for one other plastic seat squeezed in between desk and door. Sometimes, if he was busy completing order forms or logging time sheets, Gabe let his phone ring until it beeped and played the message. You have reached the office of Gabriel Lightfoot, executive chef of the Imperial Hotel, London. Please leave your name and number after the tone, and he will call you back as soon as possible. To listen to it you’d think the office was something else, that he was someone else, altogether.

Looking up, he saw Suleiman working steadily at his mise-en-place, chopping shallots and, with a clean sweep of the broad knife blade, loading them into a plastic box. Victor came around from the larder section carrying a baguette. He stood behind Suleiman, clamped the bread between his thighs, and holding on to Suleiman’s shoulders, aimed the baguette at his buttocks. In every kitchen there had to be one. There had to be a clown. Suleiman put down his knife. He grabbed the baguette and tried to stuff it down Victor’s throat.

Even yesterday, after Benny had gone down to the catacombs to look for rat poison and returned with the news; after Gabe had seen Yuri for himself, after the police had arrived, after Mr. Maddox had come down personally to announce that the restaurant would be closed and to speak to everyone about their responsibilities for the day; even after all that, Victor had to be the clown. He sidled up to Gabe, smiling and winking, a red flush to his schoolboy cheeks, as if a death were a small and welcome distraction like catching an eyeful of cleavage or the flash of a stocking top. So, he was naked, old Yuri. Victor tittered and then made the sign of the cross. I think he was waiting for his girlfriend. You think so, Chef, eh, do you think?

Naturally, the first thing Gabe had done was call the general manager, but he got through to Maddox’s deputy instead. Mr. James insisted on seeing for himself, arriving with a clipboard shielding his chest. He disappeared into the basement, and Gabe thought, this could go on forever. How many sightings of a dead body were required before it became an established fact? No one said it was the Loch Ness Monster down there. He smiled to himself. The next moment he was swept by a watery surge of panic. What if Yuri was not dead? Benny had told him with a calm and unquestionable certainty that Yuri was dead. But what if he was still alive? There was a pool of blood around his head, and he didn’t look like a living thing because his legs, his chest, were blue, but who wouldn’t be cold, stretched out naked and bleeding on the icy catacomb floor? Gabe should have checked for a pulse, he should have put something soft beneath Yuri’s head, at the very least, he should have called for an ambulance. I should have sent you a doctor, Yuri, not Mr. James with his bloody Montblanc fountain pen and his executive leather pad.

The deputy manager was taking his time. Gabe stood in the kitchen with his chefs. The trainees, gathered around an open dustbin brimming with peelings, chewed their tongues or scratched their noses or pimples. Damian, the youngest, a straggly seventeen, trailed his hand in the bin as though contemplating diving in and hiding his sorry carcass under the rotting mound. Stand up straight, thought Gabriel. At another time he might have said it out loud. It occurred to him that Damian was the only other English person who worked in the kitchen. Don’t let the side down, lad. It was a ridiculous thought. The kind of thing his father might say. Gabriel looked at Damian until Damian could not help looking back. Gabe smiled and nodded, as though to provide some kind of stiffening for those rubbery seventeen-year-old bones. The boy began flapping his hand inside the bin, and the tic in his right eye started up. Jesus Christ, thought Gabe, and walked around to the sauce section to get the boy out of his sight.

The chefs de partie, Benny, Suleiman, and Victor, lined up against the worktop with their arms folded across their chests, as if staging a wildcat strike. Beyond them, Ivan was still working, cooking off lamb shanks that would later be braised. Ivan was the grill man. His station, at the front of the kitchen, close to the pass, encompassed a huge salamander, a triple-burner char grill, four-ring hob, and double griddle. He kept them at full blaze. Around his forehead he wore a bandanna that soaked up some—though by no means all—of the sweat. He took pride in the amount of blood he managed to wipe from his fingers onto his apron. He worked split shifts, lunch and dinner six days a week, and apart from the crew who came in at five in the morning to grill sausages and fry eggs for the buffet breakfast, no one was allowed to venture into Ivan’s domain. Gabriel liked to rotate his chefs between the sections, Benny on cold starters and desserts one month, Suleiman the next, but Ivan was implacable. Nobody else knowing about steaks like me, Chef. Don’t put me chopping rabbit leaves. He had a cauliflower ear, sharp Slavic cheekbones, and an even sharper accent, the consonants jangling together like loose change. Gabe had decided straightaway to move him but he had not done it yet.

Filling suddenly with impatience, Gabe walked toward the basement door. He slowed and finally halted by the chill cabinet of soft drinks and dairy desserts. If Yuri wasn’t really dead, then the deputy manager would be giving first aid and questioning him closely, doing all the things that Gabriel should have done, before going upstairs to report to Mr. Maddox about all the things that Gabriel had failed to do. Gabe was aghast at the enormity of his managerial lapse. He was here not because he wanted to be but only to prove himself. Show us, said the would-be backers for his own restaurant, manage a kitchen on that scale, and we’ll put up the money; work there for a year and turn that place around. They’d get word, of course. Everyone in this whole stinking business would know. And what would he say to Mr. Maddox? How would he explain? To report, say, a side of salmon as missing, suspected stolen, only to have it turn up in the wrong storeroom, that would be bad enough, but to report the death of an employee and to have the employee turn up alive, if not exactly well, that was ineptitude of an altogether different order. Damn that Benny and his idiotic certainty. What made him an expert on death? Gabe touched the crown of his head where a little wormhole of baldness had recently appeared. Damn that Yuri as well. He leaned against the chill cabinet, grimacing and swallowing, as if worry were something that had to be kept low down, somewhere in the intestinal tract.

When the deputy manager came through the door, Gabe scanned him quickly for signs. Mr. James’s fingers trembled as he punched numbers into his mobile phone, and his face was unnaturally white, as if he too had bled out on the concrete floor. Thank God, thought Gabriel, preparing to act with authority. He tried to feel sorry for cursing Yuri but all he could feel was relief.

The ambulance and two policemen, a local foot patrol, arrived simultaneously. The paramedics pronounced the porter dead, but for a while all else was confusion. The foot patrol radioed a sergeant, who in turn called in the Homicide Assessment Team. By the time Maddox got in from his meeting, there were half a dozen coppers in his kitchen.

What the hell is going on? he said, as if he held Gabriel personally responsible.

Get that back door locked, said the sergeant. The fire exit, too. I’ve just found someone trying to slip off.

One of the plainclothes guys—Gabriel had quickly lost track of who was who—rapped a work surface with a slotted spoon. Everyone needs to stay put. We’ll be talking to you all individually. And I’m not interested in your papers. I’m not here for that.

Mr. James did his best to look authoritative, drawing himself up to full height. Every one of our employees has a national insurance number. I can vouch for it personally. That is a fact.

The policeman ignored him. "How you got here is no concern of mine. We’re here to do a job. Those of you worrying about your papers can stop right now. Because we are not worried about you. Clear? We just want to know what you know. Everyone clear on that?"

What the bloody hell is going on? said Maddox.

There was no chatter in the kitchen now, only a row of watchful faces. One of the policemen emerged from the basement and asked Maddox and Gabriel to step into Gabe’s office. Parks, he said. I’m the senior investigating officer on this case.

Case? said Maddox. What case?

Parks smiled thinly. Duty officer—that’s the sergeant there—didn’t like the look of it. Soon as someone calls it sus, you’re dealing with a crime scene, incident log’s up and running.

Did he fall, or was he pushed? said Maddox, simmering. Do me a favor.

Matter of fact, said Parks, I agree with you. Looks like your chap fell. Tell you what’s caused the confusion. There’s castoff on the floor and a spot on the wall as well.

Meaning? said Gabe.

Parks yawned. Apart from the blood pooled by the head, there’s some splashes around the place—like you might get if someone had been hit on the back of the head, for instance.

You’re not saying— began Maddox.

I’m not. The CSM’s taken a sample. Crime scene manager. We do like our acronyms.

And the splashes? said Gabe.

Bit of a boozer, was he? Few empties down there. Probably what’s happened is he slipped over, cut his head, got up and staggered around a bit, then fell back down. I don’t blame the duty officer for calling it, but when I can get a BPA expert down there—should be someone on his way now… He checked his watch. Blood pattern analysis. When I get my BPA guy down there, hundred to one that’s what he’ll say.

So all this is a formality, said Maddox.

No sign of robbery or anything like that. His things don’t seem to have been disturbed. Of course, we’ll be thorough. Once you set the ball rolling, you see, you’ve got to work it through to the end.

Can we open again tomorrow? said Maddox.

The detective stuck his hands in his pants pockets. He looked, Gabriel thought, somehow disappointing in his brown chinos and oatmeal sport jacket. Don’t see why not, said Parks. Should have the body out of there soon. The CSM’s got to bag the head and hands, and then it can go for the postmortem. That area will stay cordoned off for the time being.

The postmortem’s the end of it? said the general manager.

The coroner will give his initial findings—injuries consistent with a fall, that kind of thing, open an inquest, and adjourn it awaiting the final police report.

And the postmortem results you get back when?

Unless the BPA throws up any surprises, it won’t go through on a rush job. We can get it done in forty-eight hours if there’s cause; otherwise, it’s more like five or six days. Ah, looks like my blood man’s arrived. I take it you’ve called environmental health?

Oh, yes, said Mr. Maddox grimly. We’ve called in the council. We’ve called in health and safety. We’ve not called in the navy yet, but we’ve called everyone else.

Gabe checked the time. Nearly ten thirty. He had been sitting in his office over half an hour without getting a single thing done. He tried to remember the last time he’d spoken to the Ukrainian. A conversation about the grease on the extractor hoods, but that was about a month ago. Yes, Chef, Yuri would have said. I’ll see to it, Chef. Something like that. There wasn’t much call for an executive chef to speak to a night porter unless he was giving trouble, and Yuri, until yesterday, had been no trouble at all.

Oona knocked and entered the office all in one bustling move. She squashed her backside into the orange plastic seat. I been keepin’ up the spirits out there with a little bitta prayer. Her voice was invariably strangled, as though she was just about managing not to laugh or cry or shout. She leaned her elbows on the desk and rested her chin on her hands.

We’re not here for tea and bloody buns, thought Gabe. There was something about Oona that infuriated him. It wasn’t the fact that she was so often late for work, it wasn’t the inefficient manner in which she worked, it wasn’t that her idea of fine dining was stew and dumplings with a sprig of parsley on top, and it wasn’t even the fact that she couldn’t cook so much as a fish finger without managing to cock it up. He had worked with lazier cooks, stupider cooks, cooks who would serve up a bowl of sick if they thought they could get away with it. What offended him about Oona was simply this: her domesticity. When she blew into his office and sat down, it was as if she had just got home with the shopping, looking forward to a cuppa and a chat. The way she talked, the way she walked, the way she pressed her bosom when she was thinking, all of it, at core, was irreducibly and inescapably domestic. In Gabe’s experience, women who worked in kitchens—and there were a few—worked the hardest, swore the loudest, and told the dirtiest jokes. It wasn’t about being one of the boys, not necessarily—they could flirt like hell, too—but it showed that they knew the rules. The professional kitchen was not the same as the domestic kitchen. The two were worlds apart. Only Oona—who, by staying on the spot for the best or worst part of two decades, had risen to the rank of executive sous chef—seemed unaware of the distinction.

He reached in his desk drawer for the staff rota, noticing yet again the way the Formica was beginning to split and the notches carved in the plywood base, put there, it was said, by the previous chef, who was counting the days spent sober on the job (a total of nine), and when he turned back to Oona he sat very straight and correct as if that might dissuade her from melting all over his desk.

There’s a lot of different religions in here, Oona. You want to watch out you don’t offend someone.

Hoo-ee, said Oona, showing her gold tooth. The good Lord don’ mind ’bout the words. As long as He hear the prayer.

It wasn’t Him I was thinking about, said Gabe, wondering, not for the first time, if he should get rid of her or if it would be more trouble than it was worth.

Well, darlin’, said Oona, that is the problem right there.

Give me strength, thought Gabe. Right, he said briskly, difficult day today. Can you call the agency and get some cover for Yuri? For Benny, too. He’s at home, getting over the…the shock. Benny, in fact, had not wanted to take a day off, but Gabe had ordered it, knowing HR would look askance otherwise.

Poor, poor ting, said Oona. The words formed little explosions on her lips, so it seemed they had been forced from her body by a series of blows to the chest. She rolled her eyes up to heaven.

Yes, said Gabe, though why Benny had been roaming the subterranean corridors—the catacombs, as they were known—way past the dry goods and freezer rooms, way past where any stores were kept, had yet to be explained. It occurred to Gabriel that but for Benny, Yuri might not have been found, not for a long time, at least. Stupid, how stupid, he thought, without knowing quite what he meant.

My day off, said Oona. Of course it all happen on my day off.

Gabe considered this for a moment. If she had not been off, Oona seemed to be saying, everything would have been okay. Or perhaps she was simply regretting missing out on the drama. We have to keep our minds on the job, he said.

Yes, Chef, said Oona. She smiled, crinkling her almond-shaped eyes. Her face was much younger than her fifty-five years, smooth-skinned and plump with a scattering of girlish freckles across the bridge of her nose. There was no trace of gray in her hair, which she wore cropped high above her little ears. She kept diamanté hairclips fastened to her chef’s coat and, presumably, fixed them on either side of her head after work. She was fat, but somehow the fat added to her youthfulness, as though it were something she would outgrow. Yuri, she said, that poor ting, living down there like a little old rat. How long you tink he been down there, mmm?

Oona, said Gabe, searching for a way to keep the conversation on the straight and narrow, the police are looking into all that.

Oona slipped off a shoe and reached down to massage her instep. Her feet, it seemed, belonged to her age. They were so broad they were practically square, and the black flats she wore to work strained at the seams. They going to interview me this afternoon. Mr. Maddox say so this mornin’. Lord, she said, cramming her foot back into the shoe, Lord only know what happen.

It’s pretty clear, actually, said Gabe. Parks looked like a pen pusher, but he clearly knew his job. The crime scene forensics had borne out his theory, and there’d be no rush with the postmortem. Yuri was living in the basement. He had a mattress down there and everything, the other side of the rubbish chutes, in what used to be the old facilities office. He took a shower in the waiters’ locker room, he’d probably been drinking, he was going back to his room, he slipped, he banged his head, he died. Tragic, yes. Mysterious, no, not at all.

Lord only know, repeated Oona.

Gabe picked up a pen, clicked the top to release the nib, and clicked again to retract it. He wondered what it was that Gleeson could not come out and say about Yuri. He was sure Gleeson was involved in some way. Why else would he be getting himself worked up? Everything would become apparent in the fullness of time. Gabe pressed the end of the pen over and over. Click, click, click, click, click.

Never mind, darlin’, said Oona, patting his hand. We all feelin’ it, you know.

Shall we get on? said Gabriel. There’s a lot to get through.

Yes, yes, yes. I know. She wiggled her bottom to try and get comfortable, a difficult task in the circumstances of being wedged between desk and door. But Yuri, love him. What he tinkin’? It ain’t no hotel down there.

That was it. If something smelled bad you followed the trail and the trail led back to Gleeson. Gleeson was pulling every scam in the book and a few on top besides.

You arks me, said Oona, they gonna sue the arse off this place.

Who? Who is going to sue? Anyway, he wasn’t supposed to be down there. For a moment Gabriel had been sure that Gleeson was renting the space to Yuri, charging extra for the mattress, perhaps, but now the idea seemed ludicrous. Those empty bottles of Rémy Martin. You don’t buy premium brandy on a night porter’s salary, not at full price, anyway. It wasn’t Gabe’s business, though. There was going to be an inquest. Let them find out what they needed to know. Let Mr. Maddox find out the rest.

M’mm, said Oona with some apparent satisfaction. Get their arses sued.

That’s as may be, said Gabriel. What we’ve got to worry about is getting this staff rota up to date.

Got Nikolai covering for Benny, said Oona, he know his stuff all right.

Nikolai, one of the commis chefs, was on a lower grade than Benny, but Oona was right, he was more than capable.

Rang the agency ’bout an hour ago, Oona continued. Two porters on they way.

Two? Who else is missing?

The girl. What’s the name? You know, washing the pots and all. She rubbed her breast while she thought. Oh, she so skinny, that girl, she pass under doors, she so thin she hard to see. You want to sit her down with someting nice and hot and say, for Lord’s sake, child, you eat now. Eat!

She call in sick? Gabe checked the time. This coffee morning had to come to an end.

Got it now—Lena, said Oona, laughing. Hoo. She leaner than me, all right.

She call in sick? Gabe repeated. He vaguely recalled this skinny Lena.

No, said Oona, but nobody saw her yesterday, so I hear, and she not in today for her shift. Probably she took a scare, with all the tings that happen, you know.

Have you called her house, then? Gabe asked.

Oona looked at him and pursed her lips, clearly deciding whether he was mad or simply joking. Giving him the benefit of the doubt, she began to laugh her deep and throaty laugh. Go on, she said, go on.

It seemed to Gabe that Oona did not laugh the same way other people did. Other people laughed politely or rudely, sarcastically or knowingly, helplessly, hopelessly, with sadness or with joy, depending on the situation at hand. But Oona had only one laugh, as if in reply to some never-ending cosmic joke. He said, She doesn’t have a phone. Of course not. It was pointless prising phone numbers from porters, anyway. If you managed to get through, it would be to someone who spoke no English. Or to someone who, in broken English, vehemently denied that the person in question had ever entered the UK, let alone set foot in their house. Is she agency or permanent?

Oona thought for a moment. Gabriel looked over the kitchen floor and saw Victor emptying a plastic bag of frozen chips into a deep-fat fryer. Frozen chips were banned; all frozen vegetables had been banned since Gabriel took charge five months ago. But there was Victor, the smart-arse, carrying on as if he were a law unto himself.

She come through the agency, Oona was saying, yes, that’s right, mmm. The sentence finished, but she continued, mmming and yesing, soft little soothing sounds uttered beneath her breath as if she had divined his mounting rage and would blanket it with her mumbles.

She shows up, tell her to get lost again. I’m not having it.

I goin’ to give her a warnin’, said Oona. Got to have two or three warnin’s.

No, said Gabe. She’s only agency. He shrugged to show he was taking no pleasure in this. I’m sorry, Oona, but she’s fired.

The kitchen, along with the rest of the Imperial Hotel, was a product of the Victorian age. But while the lobby and function rooms, the bedrooms and bathrooms, the stairways and corridors and vestibules had been transmuted into twenty-first-century spaces within a nineteenth-century shell, the kitchen—despite numerous refurbishments and refittings—retained its workhouse demeanor, the indelible stamp of generations of toil. It was a large, low-ceilinged room, roughly square with two doglegs attached, the first containing the vegetable prep area, the other housing the industrial-size dishwashers, one each for plates, glasses, and pans. Beyond the washers and sinks was a short corridor that led to the unloading bay, where trucks pulled up from the early hours of the morning until late in the afternoon and to which Ernie (a lifer even by Oona’s standards) scuttled back and forth from the tiny prefab hut where he sighed over his poetry and the computer that scared him half to death. Going back into the hotel but out on a wing from the main kitchen, just before the offices filled with toothy young marketing assistants, was the pastry kitchen. In contrast to the big kitchen, the air in here was permanently cool, in theory because of the nature of the work, but whenever Gabe walked in or even past, he could not help feeling it was because of Chef Albert, whose icy breath could chill the warmest of hearts.

From where Gabe was standing now, with his back to the pass and his hands on the edge of the hot shelf that ran two thirds the length of the room, he could not see these far reaches of his domain. He could see the larder, sauce, and fish and meat sections. He could see the tiny workstation where one of the commis dished up endless burgers and fries for room service, turning back and forth among the stainless-steel worktop, fry baskets, and grill, circling around and back, around and back, like a dog settling down for a nap. And he could see the way that decades of halfhearted refits, of misaligned edges and a mishmash of equipment, gave the place a desperate kind of look, as if it were only just managing to hold itself together.

Even the floor, he thought, gives up. The tiles, he judged, had been laid in the last few years, heavy-duty red-brown stone. But they failed to make it up to the edges and into the corners where archaeological trails of slate, terra-cotta, and linoleum could be found. When the kitchen was busy, when knives wheeled and pans slammed, when the burners hissed and flared, when the white plates marched, when the chefs shouted orders and insults and jokes, swerving and bending, performing the modern dance of cuisine, this place was transformed.

But today the lunch service was dead. One of the porters, a Filipino in a dark green boiler suit, pushed a mop over the tiles with such detachment that it was the mop that seemed animate, dragging the porter along. On the grease-spattered back wall, painted an institutional sage, a health and safety poster and a ripped-out Chapter 3 pinup fluttered in the stale draught of the electric fan. In twos and threes, beneath the life-sapping fluorescent lights, the chefs gossiped and planned cigarette breaks. What a place, thought Gabe, looking away at the grilled and bolted back door and the barred and lightless window. What a place: part prison, part lunatic asylum, part community hall.

The printer that stood on the pass and connected with the restaurant till began to whirr. Gabriel grabbed the docket. Battle stations, he called, one consommé royale, two whitebait, one red mullet, one cacciatore, one osso buco. Let’s go.

Chef, said Suleiman, approaching with a Tupperware box, I have been playing around with the consommé garnish. A chiffonade of sorrel and chervil. He displayed the contents of the box and then kissed his thumb and forefinger. Really, really tasty. You think it’s okay?

Suleiman was from India. He had spent under three years in England, but already his English was better than Oona’s. He was the only person in the kitchen who showed any interest in food. A consommé royale did not have those herb garnishes. That would turn it into a consommé julienne. But Gabe did not want to discourage him. It’s okay, he said. Good work, Suleiman.

Suleiman smiled. Though he brought to his smile the same thoroughgoing attitude with which he executed all tasks, stretching his lips wide and over his teeth, nodding his head and wrinkling his eyes, it did little to dent the seriousness of his face. Even in his white chef’s hat and coat and apron, even with his short, slightly bow legs in blue check trousers and with a skillet in his hand, Suleiman did not look like a chef. He looked like a loss adjuster, wearing a disguise.

Gabriel decided to do a walk around and moved past Suleiman, dispensing a quick pat on the back.

In the larder section Victor was idling, kicking his heels against the under-the-worktop fridge. He was one of those young men who mistook their nervous energy and frustration for charisma, which made him impossible to like. The way he stood, jutting his chin and tilting his pelvis, he thought he was back in some alleyway in Moldova, waiting for a hustle to begin.

Keeping busy? said Gabriel.

What team you support? said Victor.

What?

"Team. Team. Football."

Victor wore cologne and plucked between his eyebrows. The boy was clearly in love with himself. Rovers, said Gabriel. Blackburn Rovers.

Victor made a hand gesture indicating that Rovers were, in his view, only a so-so team. My team—Arsenal. Back home—Agro.

Makes sense, said Gabriel. Excuse me for saying this, but isn’t there something you should be doing right now?

No, said Victor. What?

Work, said Gabriel. That’s what we come here to do. Remember? That’s what they pay us for.

Be cool, man, said the Moldovan in a stupid American accent. Look, he said with a sweep of the hand, "everything ready."

Gabriel checked over the salad tubs and garnishes. He pulled open the fridge doors and did a quick count of the cold starters: aubergine and mozzarella towers and fanned melons with parma ham. All right, he said. Well. On a whim, he stuck a spoon in the gremolata and tasted it. No. I don’t think so. Something’s missing here. He tasted again. What about the anchovy fillet?

Chef, said Victor, folding his arms. There is no anchovy fillet. You want, I’ll make the order.

Check the dry store downstairs.

Victor looked at the floor.

Haven’t got all day, said Gabe. The gremolata goes on the osso buco.

Chef, said Victor. He held his palms in the air and grinned, laboring under the misconception that he could charm his way out of anything.

Right now, said Gabriel, keeping his voice low. He decided—it was a tactical decision—that if the bullshit continued, he would put it on. He never, hardly ever, lost his temper. But sometimes he put it on.

No way I’m going down there, said Victor. It spooks me, man. So he fell on some handle, right? Was it sticking in the back of his head?

Victor…

But Victor couldn’t stop talking. Shit, he said. It sounded like "sheet. You gotta have respect for the dead, see? Respect, see what I’m saying?" He spent a lot of time watching American movies. Pirated DVDs, no doubt.

I’m giving you an order, Gabriel barked. Do as you are told. He set his mouth. His father used to fly off on one. Naught to sixty in three seconds flat. He’d come home from a bad day at Rileys and sit by the gas fire shuffling the local paper and his feet. Tea on the table at six. Is it too much to ask? Mum usually smoothed it over. Sometimes she yelled, Yes. Then he’d go ballistic, shouting down the house and trembling, actually trembling, with rage. His ears turned crimson nearly up to the top, where, it seemed, they went white hot. Gabriel waited out the storm with Jenny, sitting at the top of the stairs, and though his stomach felt funny, as if he had a bout of diarrhea coming on, he knew it was Dad who was pathetic because he couldn’t control himself.

A cloud settled on Victor’s face, and he screwed up his features as though he’d been sprayed with disinfectant. Yes, Chef. He spat.

Never mind, said Gabe, suddenly sick of everything. I’ll go down there myself.

The catacomb walls, white paint over brick, were studded with beads of water, as if pricked by tears here and there. Naked lightbulbs hung in the corridor, casting Halloween shadows against doors. It was the kind of place you expected footsteps to clang and echo, but Gabriel’s polyurethane clogs made barely a sound on the concrete floor. He passed by the locker rooms, one for the boys and one for the girls. Someone had drilled a spyhole between the two, and Gleeson fired the Italian waiter, despite a dearth of evidence, for possession, perhaps, of hot Latin blood. Gabe glanced into the old fish room, the paint on the door so flaky that it appeared to have grown scales of its own. Most of the fish came ready-prepped these days, and only the frozen fillets (permitted in the fisherman’s pie) made the journey underground. The air still smelled like low tide, of sand and browned-out seaweed. He walked, and the air grew steadily clearer, then began to smell of bleach. Overhead, somewhere, a trolley rumbled by. The pipes and ducts and fearsome screeds of wiring that coated the ceiling sounded a continuous muted distress. Turning the first corner, Gabe wondered how long the catacombs would be if you laid them end to end. They would be difficult to unravel, laid out in epileptic fits and starts, twists and dead ends.

The kitchen was hardly the ideal layout, either. When he had his own place, he would insist on starting from scratch. Refit from top to bottom, he would absolutely insist.

Charlie wanted to start a family. I’m not getting any younger, she said. She was only thirty-eight. When she looked in the mirror, her gaze was skeptical, as if the plump-skinned, green-eyed, redheaded siren in the glass wasn’t fooling anybody, Charlie least of all. Working as a singer didn’t help. There were plenty of younger girls around. You and your stupid plan, she’d say, stirring her martini. Don’t plan on me hanging around. Gabe thought he would pop the question on the day the contract was signed. Do you want to move in together? He knew the answer, of course. They’d find a new flat, maybe on the river, where he could watch the silty banks and unmoving flow of the Thames. After a year, when they were sure, they could try for a child.

A child. He touched the bald spot at his crown and wondered if it was getting bigger. He was, he realized, standing by the yellow and black tape that marked off the place where Yuri had lived and died. He was puzzled, unable to remember what he had come here for. There had to be a reason. He supposed that he meant to spend a moment or two simply to pay his respects.

We could run away to Tobago, Charlie had said when she came off the stage. You dish up the surf and turf, I’ll be pouring the drinks.

Gabriel stared at the floor, the steel trapdoor that marked some long-forgotten coal hole, the treacherously bladed handle flecked with Yuri’s blood. The door to the old facilities office stood open; the light still burned inside. The police had left the mattress and sleeping bags. Everything else had been taken—two black bin liners containing Yuri’s worldly goods. Gabe ducked under the tape and went into the office. He picked a candy wrapper off the floor and put it in his pocket. The room was the size of a double bedroom with two shelved alcoves on facing walls. They had found a gas burner, a couple of pans, empty jars and spirit bottles, shaving foam and a razor, a change of clothes, a pillbox with a lock of hair inside, and an old photograph of a woman with a cleft chin and two little girls in big coats.

When she had sung her last set, Charlie’s back always ached from standing so long in her heels. Her eyes ached from the smoke in the club. What about a cruise ship? I’ll sing, you cook. Or the other way round, if you like.

A few more months and they’d move in together. She wanted to dock, not sail.

He looked around. He didn’t know what to do. He had come to pay his respects to Yuri but had hardly given him a thought. He should have sent someone out for flowers. He would lay a bouquet on the spot. There was mold growing in the corner, and one of the shelves looked charred, an accident with the gas burner, perhaps. Thank God it was only himself Yuri had managed to kill.

Yesterday morning Gabe had walked up to the body, stopped a couple of paces off, and stood with his hands in his pockets, waiting a few blank moments before walking away again. Yuri was lying on his back, with thick, black blood like a hood cast up around his head. He had white hair on his chest, in short, singed-looking tufts. His stocky legs were skewed in different directions as though attempting to perform the splits or some kind of Cossack dance. The towel that he had been clutching had wrapped itself around a foot. He had a wise face, had Yuri: easy to miss when he was a man in a green boiler suit, shifting grease. But somehow, as he lay there splayed and naked, it wasn’t hard to notice, and his blue and kindly lips had parted, as if ready to dispense good advice.

Don’t know, Ivan had said when the inspector asked what he knew about Yuri’s family.

No, no, nothing, Victor said when asked what he knew about Yuri himself.

I don’t have any information concerning, said Suleiman.

Please, said Benny, I don’t know.

Gabe didn’t do much better. He handed over details of the agency through which Yuri had been employed.

Yuri was lying somewhere, unattended, on a mortuary slab. It was loneliness, certainly, that killed Yuri. For an instant Gabriel was desolate. He kicked at the mattress and tapped the wall as though checking for damp or loose plaster, searching for an immediate job to be done. He swept his hand across a shelf and dislodged a soft roll of fabric that had caught between the shelf and wall. A pair of sheer black tights in a shrunken ball.

So, he was naked, old Yuri. I think he was waiting for his girlfriend. You think so, Chef, eh, do you think?

Gabriel sensed someone behind him, another beating heart. He stuffed the tights in his trouser pocket and turned and saw her. That girl, Lena, standing in the doorway in the jumble of shadow and light, let him look at her and she looked back at him. Her face was thin and rigid, and her hands, which she held twisted together at her chest, were fleshless claws. This morning he had told Oona to fire her. It astonished him that he had never looked at her before. Gabriel breathed deeper, to breathe the air she had breathed.

He opened his mouth without knowing what he would say.

Lena smiled, or he imagined it, and then she ran away, into the maze.

Two

The Imperial Hotel, as Mr. Maddox was fond of pointing out, had a history. Built in 1878 by industrialist and champion muttonchop grower Sir Edward Beavis, on the site once occupied by Dr. Culverwell’s Bathing Establishment on Yew Street, Piccadilly, the hotel shouldered as many previous incarnations as it did flying buttresses and gargoyles on its Gothic Revival exterior. Following the respectability and discreet luxury of the Victorian era when the smoking and billiards rooms kept the ladies out of harm’s way, the Imperial enjoyed a roaring-twenties reputation for dance, decadence, and statutory rape. Charles Chaplin’s 1921 visit (escorted through the fans by no fewer than forty policemen) had made the Imperial de rigueur with the stars and starlets of the British silent screen. In 1922, in a widely reported case, Tyrone Banks (best-known picture Heave Ho!) was caught with his pants down and three underage flappers beneath the shot silk sheets. The escapade remained curiously omitted from the hotel brochure, but Mr. Maddox had enjoyed relating it to Gabe when he interviewed him for the job.

After that, he had appeared to lose interest and swiveled his chair around to look out the window, so that Gabe was left staring at the column of iron filings that ran down the back of his neck. Noël Coward, Mr. Maddox had said, "composed songs here. Big deal. The Aga Khan had a permanent suite. Theodore Roosevelt ‘gave his name’ to the drawing room. Generous, would you say? Who else? Haile Selassie. That’s in the brochure. Bunch of marketing geniuses I

Reviews for In the Kitchen

[lindahallmann · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Not woth the time to read, about a chief whose life is out of control

[rdra1962 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

A most painfully dull read. I see the point Ali is trying to make about undocumented workers etc, but she has chosen whiny, annoying unlikeable characters to tell her story. Another bomb!

[mfdavis-1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I gave up on this one...just couldn't really care about any of the characters. All seemed whiney and self-absorbed. I'm disappointed because I expected better from the author & the setting (a London restaurant) sounded interesting.

[ameise1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

It took me a length to drop into the story and it wasn't an easygoing reading. I was very often confused about all the subjects which were leading the plot. There were bipolar disorder, conflicts and exploitations of in-migrants, complicated love lives and family matters as a dying father, a demented grandmother and learning secrets about a dead mother. In my opinion the introduction and links of all those subjects haven't been so straight. Only in the last quarter of the story the reading went fluently and made for me some sense.

[jpe9 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Many of the reviewers here didn't like it -- many thought Ali's _Brick Lane_ was far better. I can't wait to read that because I really loved this! The characterization of Gabriel Lightfoot -- the executive chef in midlife, who unravels personally and professionally in a bipolar episode that the reader sees from Gabe's POV -- was brilliant. As a citizen of the U.S., I found the discussion of political and economic realities of Britain then and now to be interesting and relevant. In general I found the book page-turningly suspenseful -- will it turn out that the restaurant porter was murdered? What are Gabe's underling Ivan and his colleague Gleeson up to? How is Gabe going to find out and what's he going to do about it?

[stuartaston · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This book follows the life of Gabriel Lightfoot a chef who is looking to the future. He is setting up his own restuarant, behind the back of his present employee has a girlfriend who he wants to marry, but never introduces to his family, and a group of people who he works with but who cannot be counted as friends.After the death of one of the foreign workers he starts having dreams and tries to help Lena who has ties to the dead man. And from here his world starts to unravel......how can we stop his world as he knows it crashing around his ears? Does he even want to - and are his problems linked to issues his mother had years ago.As he get closer to his father he finds out the truth and this helps him in the end reach a level he feels happy with in life.Based around a hotel the book has a small but focused group of people to follow which holds your interest all the way through. It keeps you interested in the life of Gabriel from the beginning to the rockier end - and even throws a bit of illegal worker intrigue in as well for good measure.A really enjoyable book!

[pamjw · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The story of Gabe Lightfoot and his complicated life. Gabe is working at a chef The Imperial Hotel, but planning to open his own restautant; he is planning to marry Charlie; and he discovers his gather is ill. And then there is the kitchen worker found dead in the kitchen's basement - and Lena...This story starts of really slowly, and continues slowly for the first 450 or so pages. It seems like one long preamble, like you're waiting for the story to start. It gets better in the last 100 or so pages, but I'm not sure it was worth the wait.If you want a story about Eastern Europena working conditions and trafficking Marina Lewycka's Two Caravans is so much better

[lucybird_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Okay, time to be honest, I pretty much bought In the Kitchen because I remembered really liking Brick Lane. I was waiting for it to come out in paperback for so long I eventually gave in and brought it in hardback when Borders was closing down, but it’s still one of the books which has been on my To Be Read list for the longest amount of time. I did start it shortly after buying it but decided I wasn’t in the right mood for reading it, so it has sat on my TBR pile staring at me ever since. Everytime my TBR pile gets low it seems to be saying “Pick me! Pick me! You wanted me so much!” but I was never in the right mood.Well when I eventually did get around to starting it (almost a week ago now) I couldn’t understand why I didn’t feel right about it first time. There is something about the opening which showed so much promise. A bit of intrigue, a promise of something unknown to be revealed. Unfortunately things went downhill from there. Things were just so slow. That first chapter made insinuations that lots was going to happen. I didn’t really expect a fast paced, exciting, detective style novel. It’s still Monica Ali after all and if Brick Lane is anything to go by she’s not the writer of fast paced novels, preferring the gradual reveal. However while I remember Brick Lane having so fantastic descriptions and a great insight to life as an Asian migrant in Britain I didn’t find any such interest in In The Kitchen. While there was the element of a revealing of life as an Eastern European migrant it wasn’t as deep as the insight had been in Brick Lane and didn’t hold so much interest for me.Really it wasn’t a story about Eastern Europeans, or about a kitchen. It wasn’t a story about a death. It wasn’t a story about a woman. No it was really a story about Gabriel, and, to be perfectly honest I didn’t like Gabriel. I have no particular reason to not like Gabriel, I just didn’t, and really I didn’t care about what happened to him. I think if I had cared about Gabriel I would have liked the story, so it’s really a shame I didn’t. In the Kitchen was slow going but it was all about the gradual reveal, the journey to a climatic end. By then I was a little interested, and if I liked Gabriel I might have ended up liking the whole book, such a shame.Maybe this review is a bit biased. I can see how good Monica Ali’s writing is. I can see how clever she is with her little clues of what will happen to Gabriel, how she uses the journey to a climax with great success. I really wish I could have loved this book, but in the end the journey was just too long for me.

[opinionated_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Hmm. Not easy to crystalise my thoughts about this. Its one of those books where although the characters are well drawn, its hard to care for any of them. Gabe, the head chef is clearly trying to force himself to commit - to a new restaurant, to a marriage, and has clearly been spending years in avoidance - of his past and his family. Will he finally grow up? He does, but its only through a crisis brought on by an unlikely relationship with Lena, the runaway, illegal, Eastern European porter that the crisis that forces him to grow up is brought on. Yet, I found it hard to care. Ali's heart is in the right place and the points she has to make about bonded labour, people trafficking, the miseries of the immigrant experience and the obscenity of food being sold at absurdly inflated prices vs the abject circumstances of those producing it are well made. She may yet end up being a Zola for our times. But still, I didn't really carePerhaps one of the problems were the "Northern" sections of the book; I had recently read "The Northern Clemency" - and there are a lot of parallels in the characters particularly the character of Gabe's mother. Brian Thompson's "Keeping Mum" also has many parallels; perhaps I had just read these books too close to each other, but I felt as though I could anticipate most of what was going to happen at the Lightfoot household. But the sections on the weaving business were good - and the changes to the immigrant experience as encapsulated through the changes from a manufacturing to a service economy were again, well described. But still I ultimately wasn't interested in the characters. Sorry

[eyejaybee · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

An interesting idea, though I felt that the execution was weak, and the novel was certainly at least a hundred pages longer than it should have been. I also found its plot to be very reminiscent of Amanda Craig's excellent "Hearts and Minds", though the latter book was far more engaging, and far more tightly plotted.Still, it was an enjoyable read.

[junipersun · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A brief synopsis might state this is a novel about a middle-aged chef in London who hopes to run his own restaurant but first has to deal with an employee’s death. That would be doing short shrift to the underlying themes. The obvious sub-theme is the trafficking in illegal workers. Although this is set in England, we Americans shouldn’t fool ourselves that it doesn’t happen here. Another, more subtle, theme has to do with the lies we tell ourselves, and how much our lives are influenced by how we remember our past. The truth/lie dichotomy is also found in his internal defensiveness about the lies he tells at work, and wondering whether he is a bad role model vs. whether he is providing a good lesson to his subordinates on how to get ahead in the business. Less pervasive, but important to the character’s development, is his struggle to determine where the limits of his responsibilities are, whether he lowers his moral standards when he closes his eyes to problems.Around mid-book it became difficult to continue reading pages and pages of Gabe’s stressed out thoughts and actions, and his inability to reach out for help. I had to keep putting the book down, taking a break. When I finally realized what a masterful job the author was doing at portraying a midlife crisis, I became motivated to finish the book. The ending was unexpected, but, in a way, is a Zen resolution: when we step out of ourselves we can become attuned to the larger picture.

[pammie1320 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A forty something executive chef dreams of opening his own place, marrying his singer girlfriend and raising a son. Then his Ukranian kitchen porter winds up dead in the basement of his kitchen. From this moment on Gabriel Lightfoots' life changes. Monica Ali uses the story to weave themes of gang lords, illegal trafficking, failed relationships with ourselves and others and mental health.Sometimes her writing is a little contrived and predictable especially the scenes up north where Gabe's father and grandmother lament the passing of 'britain and britishness' (whatever that was). this book was written pre credit crunch and has some interesting thoughts on the economy at the time - with hindsight this is even more interesting.a lot of the story is centred around a hotel and i thought this part was spot on - the long hours the politics the alcohol abuse. all in all a really good enjoyable read.

[michalsuz · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Reminded me a bit of Nadeem Aslam in the richness of language and the wealth of metaphor - is this the influence of being fluent in a language from a completely different language group? Again, hard to put down. Enjoyed the book, was interested in the world she created, particularly the kitchen and the hotel, and yet it is not a book I want to keep to read again. However, it does make me want to read Brick Road, which I suspect is the book where her heart lies.

[karen_o_23 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

In the Kitchen is Monica Ali's second novel following the widely acclaimed [Brick Lane] published in 2003. Our chief protagonist is Gabe, the aspiring chef of a so-so restaurant in a so-so English hotel. Gabe's life is beset with many people and problems none of which he seems to be able to make reasonable choices about and it's a bit uncomfortable to see him constantly turning left while you urge him to turn right. The variety and complexity of characters in this novel is a testament to Ali's abilties as an author; they alone make the novel worth reading. Despite that level of discomfort I must say that I enjoyed this book much more than [Brick Lane].

[jaie22 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Good, not as good as Brick Lane. A London chef gets mixed up in a sex-slave ring. Meanwhile, his father is dying of cancer. Some parts of the book center of the chef's childhood visits to his father's workplace, a fabric mill. The mill is now a shopping center; the chef and his father go there for tea and the chef finds himself at a table beside a beam where he carved his initials as a boy on a day his father was called on to deal with a particularly violent accidental death (at one of the looms? I think a beam fell on the man.).

[hay123_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Monica Ali – In the KitchenFeisty and tough, is how Monica Ali characterises herself. She is a novelist who creates controversy because she has the audacity to be both Asian and a woman who puts the spotlight on racism and inequality in modern Britain. She was born in Dhaka, Pakistan in 1967, to a white British mother and Pakistani father. When Monica was three they moved to Bolton, Lancashire. She describes her early life as a traumatic time. Her father was not able to leave East Pakistan (as Bangladesh was then known) and was not in touch with the family for over 9 months. It is from the north of England that she draws some of her characters in her new novel “In the Kitchen”, launched in Spain, in September, at the Hay Segovia Literary Festival.Her first novel, Brick Lane, prompted the promise of book burning by Bengali men, because of her portrayal of the silent lives of Bengali women. Brick Lane was turned into a successful film of the same name. Her second novel, Alentejo Blue, seemed to go askew, being based around an imaginary village in central Portugal. It followed a similar pattern, examining a collection of characters both ex-pats and Portuguese.“In the Kitchen”, Ali returns to similar themes of Brick Lane, immigration and trafficking for prostitution, as she explores the internal and external life and breakdown of the Head Chef, Gabriel Lightfoot (Gabe). She calls him “a chef adrift”. As manager of a complex hotel restaurant, involving a staff representative of the United Nations, he begins to show the cracks inherent in a “modern man in his early 40’s”. As a character he is frustrating, distant and lovable. Some would argue not dissimilar to Ali herself.For this book she spent time researching in 5 London Hotels. The reasoning behind this she says is because “kitchens are high pressure places enriched with comedy”. This kind of “research gives you a foundation to take liberties and to make things up”. She contrasts her research with the sanitised celebrity chef culture currently sweeping the UK and her desire to go deeper “to go below stairs,” “to explore the terrain of immigration beyond empire and the change of immigrant - Eastern Europeans in fields, Somali’s washing up - to uncover the reluctance of the UK to go into that space. She has written three very different books and she promises more, but refuses to expose her current inspirations. She sees herself as British and notes “there are different ways of being British”. Although having never been back to Bangladesh, she follows the news, and comments that her parents, in particular her father, tell stories of Bangladesh to her children “of fighting tigers.” She feels her upbringing has given her a foot in each camp. “It makes you observant.” It is like “standing in the shadow of the doorway, having to fit in on both sides”.As a teenager her favourite writers were Dickens, Flaubert and Dostoyevsky. Orwell has been an influence on her recent writing. She is critical of the huge trend for memoir to be linked to a novelist’s writing. In Brick Lane, the inspiration for her protagonist a poor Bengali woman who comes to the UK to marry, was her mother, rather than herself. Her mother underwent a social and cultural dislocation when she married in East Pakistan.When questioned further about racism and British society she goes to ground behind the mask of “I am just a writer”. Not least because “fiction allows you to explore complexity - to take a nuance and not be obliged to come out with an answer”. One senses a fierce intelligence that has been damaged by criticism and therefore she flips between attacking questioners with one sentence statements such as “I should be locked up” or “what do you think? and frustratingly refuses to open up to any questions that go much deeper than the superficial.She assures us that if she had any answers to the way forward for world peace she would be with the United Nations, not writing novels. Indeed if the world was collapsing she would be reading, writing or eating and so back to “In the Kitchen”. As Gabe’s life disintegrates, the reader is pulled into a mire of confusion. While he is exploring who he is, a dead body is found in the hotel cellar, his father dies and his girlfriend runs for sanity. Ali seems to have the gift of prophecy as the book accurately portrays some of the economic crisis that has spread over the UK and London in particular in recent months. This is explored through the eyes of a Labour MP and a business man, who Gabe hopes will bankroll his own restaurant. His father sees the British economy as a house of cards with no foundation. The crucial question raised by the MP is “can you ride it?” or indeed as the UK has found in recent months will “reality come around and bite you in the end”.There are some moments of humour, notably when Gabe is questioned about a dirty plate by a pompous guest. He gives the plate his own version of “spit and polish”.In all, “In the Kitchen” is worth reading for those glimpses of humour, intelligence, characterisation and daring.

[dubaireader · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Didn't deliver.I loved Brick Lane by this author and started this book with enthusiasm. Unfortunately I found it a very slow, unrewarding read and only finished it because I had to discuss it for a book group.There are some valid observations on immigrant labour, life in Britain today and the pressures of life that many of us live under and these provided the basis for a good discussion. There were also some excellent characterisations. Unfortunately I require my reading to flow, to be a pleasure to read even if the content is challenging, and it was in this context that the book failed to deliver.The central character is Gabriel Lightfoot, the head chef in the prestigous London Imperial Hotel. His staff are from various ethnic and cultural backgrounds, only one of them is English. In spite of the stresses of work in a busy kitchen they mostly seem to gel as a unit. When a kitchen porter is found dead in the cellars it is Gabriel who appears to be most affected. As he unravels we get to meet his family and girlfriend, find out more about his past and become more familiar with his staff.For a book along similar themes I would recommend The Road Home by Rose Tremain or Two Caravans by Marina Lewycka.

[redladysbooks · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

I had high hopes for In the kitchen by Monica Ali and I was thrilled to receive a copy through LibraryThing Early Reviewers. This is a hard review to write as I wanted to like this book. I read Brick Lane by Monica Ali several years ago with my book club and I liked the authors writing style. I enjoy reading foodie type books and in this book, the main character Gabriel is a chef who runs a restaurant in a major hotel in England and the story focuses on his relationships with his staff, his girlfriend, his family etc. I have to be honest....I couldn't finish the book. I found the story bleak and depressing and didn't care for Gabriel or any of the characters and the story line just seemed to drag. I read over 100 pages and then I had to put the book down. I am passing my book on to a friend that would like to read it so she may have a different perspective.

[kraaivrouw · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Urk. What to say about this novel ...The writing is good. The story should be interesting - a chef who is spiraling down into a nervous breakdown, his work in his restaurant kitchen, his interactions with his staff, his family, his girlfriend, a body, human trafficking, cancer ...The descriptions of the work in the kitchen feel true & the characters in the kitchen are sort of wonderful, but the main character is just so blah that I just couldn't bring myself to care.Somehow this just all falls flat. It's all sort of bleak, but nondescript - like a bus ride you take to & from work every day. The people on the bus look like they might be interesting & the scenery is okay, but by day 30 or so it's all just one big muddle & you ending up sleeping through it like everybody else. Very disappointing.

[clara53_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I eagerly picked up this book as soon as it reached our library shelves because I loved the Monica Ali's other novel "Brick Lane", as well as the splendid movie of the same title made from it. And I was not disappointed. The topic she embarks on is a sad product of our times. In this new novel she is particularly skillful at conveying the nuances of human interaction, the way the mind works and how thoughts have a life of their own... I was so vividly tormented together with the protagonist...

[brenzi_3 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

First I have to say that I absolutely loved Ali's first book, Brick Lane. The movie that followed was also very good so I was really looking forward to this book. Somehow, all the things I loved about Brick Lane, the immigrant experience, treatment of women, rich character development and a terrifcally absorbing storyline were totally missing form this book. On top of that, instead of building interest, the book seemed to reach its peak about midway through and then recklessly slide into the abyss. The main character, Gabriel, was totally unlikeable, which is not always a detriment to a book but in this case his lack of appeal was so overwhelming that I could barely force myself to finish. Not recommended.

[mrstreme · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

In The Kitchen by Monica Ali was like a good-looking, sweet-smelling dessert that held so much promise – until you sunk your teeth into it. Despite its delectable exterior, it turned out to be a book with little taste or appeal.The recipe was classic. Gabriel Lightfoot was on the brink of culinary success, entering into a business agreement with investors for his own restaurant and involved in a promising relationship with the perfect woman. Then, one night, one of his porters died in the restaurant’s cellar, marking a downward spiral for Gabriel – his life methodically spinning out of control.As if watching a character deteriorate was not hard enough, it was even harder to read how Gabriel made no attempt to get his life back together. His affair with Lena, a stone-cold wisp of a woman, and his treatment of his dying father did little to add to Gabriel’s plight – or his likeability. Not every character has to be likeable, but at least there should be a purpose in his general “unlikeability,” and I struggled to find that purpose in Gabriel.I do applaud Ali’s attempts to elucidate the issues of immigration, sex trade and xenophobia in this story, but it was not enough. Her themes were right, but the story wasn’t. While I had issues with the characterization and the plot, Ali’s writing was superb, and I do plan on reading more by this author. Simply put, In the Kitchen was not the story for me.

[michele_25 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Monica Ali's 3rd novel, "In the Kitchen" is the story of Gabe Lightfoot, an executive chef in a restaurant. Gabe's life begins to go downhill when a member of the kitchen staff is found dead in the restaurant basement; complications with his personal life add to his challenges.Ali's characters are interesting and her depiction of restaurant work in engaging, the story failed to hold my attention as much as her previous 2 works did. While her writing is often lyrical, the story dragged in places.

[devourerofbooks · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Gabriel Lightfoot's life HAD been going well: executive chef of a kitchen, a lovely girlfriend, and two men ready to become his partners and help him open his very own kitchen. ThenYuri, the kitchen's Ukranian porter, is found dead and everything begins to go downhill. Gabe finds out that his father is dying, becomes infatuated with the unpleasant Lena who worked at the restaurant until Yuri's death, and begins acting erraticly - jeapordizing his relationships with both his girlfriend and his business partners.There were some very interesting elements to this story around the issues of immigration, exploitation, culture, and racism/zenophobia. That being said, I really didn't enjoy this book at all. If it hadn't been a review copy I probably would not have finished it. It wasn't that it was a bad book, there were no problems with the writing, I simply didn't like any of the characters or really care about what was happening to them. Judging by the other reviews on LibraryThing, it isn't just me, either.If you're interested in Monica Ali, I'd try "Brick Lane" instead, I've heard very good things about that one.

[catarina1_1 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

If I hadn't received this book free thru Early Reviewers and therefore felt obligated to finish it, I probably wouldn't have. It was very slow going but I perservered in the hopes that it would get better, but it didn't. The characters are not particularly likeable or interesting. Nothing much happens. The protagonist, Gabe, falls for the sullen Lena who takes all his money in the end and disappears. He loses a devoted girlfriend, who in the end seems like a doormat.The main topic of the book, really in the background most of the time - the plight of immigrants in England - could have been, deserved to be addressed better.

[bostonbibliophile · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I didn't really enjoy Monica Ali's third novel, In the Kitchen. I thought her writing was very good but the plot didn't get me hooked and the characters didn't get me going either. I love the way she talks about restaurant life and working in a kitchen but overall it was just sort of bland for me.

[stonelaura · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Gabriel Lightfoot seems to be on the road to success. He escaped the mill town drudgery of his father to become a top chef at a posh London hotel, his beautiful girlfriend is just waiting for the marriage proposal, and he’s finally got backers for his long-awaited eponymous restaurant. If only the Russian porter Yuri hadn’t died in the restaurant’s cellar. Already tightly wound, Gabe begins to unravel after he agrees to take in another young new porter, Lena, as she hides from authorities. Fatigue dogs him as he is plagued by nightmare visions of Yuri’s body and feelings of guilt become overwhelming as he examines his relationships. His mind begins to wander as he observes his multi-national crew and he is both drawn to and reviled of them. To make matters worse Gabe learns that his father is dying from cancer. His trips back home to visit bring on waves of nostalgia and repulsion. When Gabe finally taps into the source of the human trafficking business that is happening within and around the hotel his already fragile state gets shaken to its core.Ali has a tremendous talent for describing and examining multi-cultural aspects of society and she takes on many facets of man’s inhumanity to mankind in this story, sometimes to the point of distraction. But her saving grace is her ability to create strong characters with relevant issues and insecurities we can all appreciate. As with “Brick Lane” we don’t have a perfect book with “In the Kitchen,” but we have inventive images, crisp language and thought-provoking ideas to accompany a complex and interesting story.

[alpin_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is Monica Ali's third book, following a brilliant debut, “Brick Lane,” and a not-very-well-received second effort, “Alentejo Blue.” She is a wonderful writer, whose talents are on vivid display in “In the Kitchen.” I've never been in a high-end restaurant kitchen or watched a reality show set in one but the world Ali has created -- a volatile mix of polyglot personalities and just-barely-contained chaos – strikes me as completely realistic and beautifully rendered. The Imperial Hotel is well past its heyday but its elegant restaurant attracts London's movers and shakers. Executive chef Gabe Lightfoot, the novel's protagonist, runs a tight ship and appears poised for breakout success. He has a beautiful girlfriend to whom he is about to propose marriage and well-heeled partners who are ready to back him in achieving his dream of opening his own bistro, which he envisions filling a niche by bringing back perfectly executed classic French cuisine. In retrospect, Gabe thinks it all started going downhill when Yuri, the restaurant's Ukrainian night porter, was found dead in the hotel basement. But this isn't a classic mystery; the events that follow aren't threads that expose sinister schemes and motives that led to Yuri's death. What Yuri's death exposes is the fragility of Gabe's psyche, as he suffers nightmares that ultimately rob him of sleep entirely, gets involved with a fragile but wily Belorussian restaurant employee, destroys his relationship with his girlfriend and copes with a dying father and the legacy of a bipolar mother. Not much happens in the first third or so of the book. I was at first captivated by Ali's pitch-perfect prose in describing the restaurant kitchen and its cast of characters. (Oona, the motherly West Indian deputy chef, is priceless.) But I was thinking that I knew as much about these people as I needed to just about the time the action finally gets under way. When it does, we are on a wild ride that, although told in the third person, has us inside Gabe's head as he becomes more and more unhinged. Along the way, there are bits of plot involving sex trade and slave labor although these seem less integral parts of the story than contrivances to illustrate the plight of immigrants. There are also beautifully written sections that take Gabe from multicultural London to the Midlands mill town where he grew up and where his father, grandmother and sister still live. The glimpses of Gabe’s childhood and the lengthy exposition of the pressures on him provide plenty of support for Gabe’s breakdown but the events that occur as he careens out of control and his rapid regaining of his senses strain credulity. This book is not an unqualified success; the narrative is sometimes sluggish and the plot not always plausible. But Monica Ali is one of those superb writers who are always worth reading even when not at their best and “In the Kitchen” is a worthy addition to her work.

[tandah_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

This book has so many big themes, and not the space or depth to explore them properly: family, community, multiculturalism, human trafficing, mid-life crisis, mental health. I did not enjoy this book for a number of reasons, the primary one being I couldn't really relate to, or feel compassion for Gabe. There wasn't enough backstory to get a sense of who he was, or how someone like Charley could love him. As he was falling apart there weren't any anchors to understand how much of him was actually going off the rails ... and he was essentially, unlikeable. My favourite parts of the book were around the discussions he had with his father, nana and sister around how his childhood community was evolving and how that the change was perceived from their various perspectives. The author provides scant information and it is therefore up to the reader to assess what has preceded the event, as well as what will eventuate - but fore me, there was not enough depth in the story to encourage me to be bothered, or to care.

[litfan_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

After thoroughly enjoying "Brick Lane," I was excited to read Monica Ali's latest novel "In the Kitchen." Unfortunately, this novel didn't quite live up to expectations.The novel starts with the death of a kitchen porter and the question of whether his death was accidental or something more sinister. The protagonist, Chef Gabriel Lightfoot, is haunted by Yuri's death and begins having nightmares about it. After an interesting beginning,the novel can never quite get its footing. It can't seem to decide if it's a murder mystery, a love story, a commentary on society's treatment of immigrants, or an exploration of the behind-the-scenes world of the restaurant business. As a result if shifts between each, and fails, for the most part, to become a coherent whole.A strength of the novel is Ali's beautiful prose and philosophical commentary. She is gifted at her use of language and the descriptions of her settings. The main character of Gabe was both a strong and a weak point. Unpredictable and unstable, Gabe is struggling to find his own identity. He is a compelling character, but at times he becomes so unlikeable that it's difficult to care what happens to him. For the persistent reader, the ending of the novel does offer some reward for hanging in there, but it may come too late in the game.