There is a way, too, in which Ali’s use of language mimics this thematic overload, aiming for metaphorical grandeur when there are more modest targets waiting to be brought down. Good on incidentals, the nagging detail and the sharp psychological fragment — the conversations between Gabe and Lena are wonderfully sparse and uneasy — she is less happy in the realm of the figurative. ‘Five years ago, when he’d tried to set up a business with a couple of inexperienced restaurateurs,’ runs an account of one of Gabe’s previous schemes, ‘it was like three chafing boils which finally exploded, leaving nothing but a big infected mess.’ In much the same way, the hotel proprietor’s laughter resembles ‘a series of heavy objects falling to the floor, lead balls perhaps, something that made you slip out of the way.’
Overlong at 400-plus pages, In the Kitchen redeems itself in its final stretch, when certain of Gabe’s hunches are proved right and others spectacularly wrong, and a great deal of authorial care is expended on a downbeat but more or less redemptive finale. I ended up thinking that, for all her skill in securing the destinies of this vagrant and populous cast, Monica Ali is writing the wrong kind of novel, and that the genuine colour and warmth she brings to her fiction would be better displayed on a smaller canvas.
D. J. Taylor’s latest novel, Ask Alice, is published by Chatto & Windus at £16.99.
Comments
There are currently no comments for this article.