Monica Ali is best known for her debut novel Brick Lane (2003), which was a huge success and poured in numerous accolades and awards for the Bangladeshi born Bolton lass. To name a few, she is one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists of the decade, Newcomer of the Year at the 2004 British Book Awards and shortlisted for most of the major literary prizes in Britain, including the Man Booker Prize for Fiction.

In the Kitchen is dubbed as a follow up to Brick Lane, which I class as an unfortunate blunder by the publishing company. Many fail to even be aware of her second publication, Alejanto Blue (2006), a collection of interdependent short stories set in Portugal, where Monica has a home also. This is the type of pigeonholing many writers are faced with in their careers as they are seen by their editors to have a certain genre, or in Monica’s case, an ethnic fan base. Therefore, her second publication has never received the same type of support or publicity as her first novel or now, her latest release.

In a Radio 4 podcast, Monica Ali describes her latest book as the story of a man who is struggling with the tensions and contradictions of a multi-cultural Britain. The plot is set in a Hotel, because it serves as a microcosm of society, encompassing all classes from the high up penthouse suites to the porters in the basement kitchen. The kitchen itself is the focal point of the book, as you may have guessed by the title. It witnesses a diverse and rich multitude of stories from different nationalities and backgrounds.

In the Kitchen marks her return to a metropolitan London. It illustrates the perils of being an executive chef at the Imperial Hotel. Gabriel is in his forties and enormously ambitious about his career. He fitfully deals with a semi midlife crisis, the impending death of his father and a kitchen staff force with people from all walks of ethnic lives, ranging from pastry chefs to porters. The story takes off as a Ukrainian porter is found dead in the cellar. From then on you will feel a certain urgency in its suspense, which is occasionally interrupted by Gabe’s visits to the former Lancashire mill towns.

While Monica seemed to have spent a huge amount of time researching the working lives of the London kitchen staff and describing each character in a very emblematic and often hilarious fashion, she somehow fails to make the relationship between Gabe and his father come to live.

It is no secret that Monica Ali is one of the more refined storytellers of our time, a very descriptive novelist with an eye for detail in some instances and a lack of in others. I didn’t enjoy Brick Lane very much, it simply could have been a little harsher in its final chapters. As for In the Kitchen, it feels as though there should have been more story, and less plot to really capture the lives of the people working in the kitchen. But I do hope that there will be a film because with the vision of a talented director such as Sarah Gavron, who directed Brick Lane the movie, this could prove another case where the film is better than the book.

(2 votes. Average: 3 out of 5)