A novel of quiet pleasures, with a perplexed hero who always rings true.
Mail on Sunday
 

'Who ends up in the kitchen, Gabe?'

'Misfits,' he said, 'psychos, exiles, culinary artists, and people who just need a job.'

In The Kitchen is Monica Ali's stunning follow up to Brick Lane. It opens with a mysterious death in the cellars of a smart, cosmopolitan hotel and over the course of the ensuing pages, peels back the layers of polyglot London to reveal the melting pot which exists below.

Once again it confirms Monica Ali not only as a great modern storyteller but also an acute observer of the vagaries of a contemporary culture.

A fast and fascinating storyteller, sure-footed with plot, pitch-perfect with character, who is also a gimlet-eyed and sharp-tongued political and cultural critic of modern times. Food, love, death, politics, crime, celebrity - all these ingredients are served up by the writer as a fresh and flavoursome literary stir-fy.
Saga Magazine

Few writers these days can strip characters to their very souls like Ali does
Entertainment Weekly

Ali's strengths lie in a cool authorial distance, and a passion for detail
The Times

A mature, bleak and beautifully crafted novel
Aminatta Forna Sunday Telegraph

Broader storylines are skillfully woven into Gabe's selfish charms. The community of a vanishing textile mill industry in which Gabe grew up is being replaced by multinational and illegal workers, and this naturally works itself into every chapter. But it is the self-destructive Gabe who will keep you turning pages
St. Louis Post-Dispatch

The kitchen of the title is the Imperial Hotel in central London, and Ali’s dazzling accounts of its manic goings-on make the chef Anthony Bourdain’s gory memoir, Kitchen Confidential, seem as genteel as Fanny Cradock.
Sunday Times

A bold novel from an intelligent writer who is determined to explore difficult relationships and uncomfortable conditions in 21st-century Britain.
Independent on Sunday

Ali lulls us into thinking this will be a conventional enough murder mystery. But to the familiar tale of life in the big city spinning out of control, she brings what Orwell called the 'power of facing unpleasant facts' dissecting the body politic with acuity and humour - and confronting unpalatable truths about our selfishness and complicity
Times Literary Supplement

Deeply flawed and wildly sympathetic […] Gabriel Lightfoot is an unforgettable protagonist, his descent into lunacy frighteningly recognizable, individual, profound
O, The Oprah Magazine

Her descriptions of Gabe's disassociated states are excellent...this is an ambitious book from a writer not content to revisit familiar territory...Serious and intelligent.
Independent

The author of the famed 2003 novel 'Brick Lane' has delivered an entertaining, poignant tale
Cleveland Plain Dealer

Ms. Ali brings a lively intelligence to her work, and her account of Gabriel’s mental breakdown, set against shifting scenes of London, is vivid and well done
Wall Street Journal

A compelling story..Ali is second to none when it comes to capturing modes of speech...Monica Ali is shaping up to be a fine novelist
Sunday Express

In The Kitchen shows Ali returning to the tensions, problems and promises of multicultural Britain...The portrayal of the battle-stations camaraderie and the banter of a top-flight kitchen is the great strength of this novel and the source of much of its humour and interest
Literary Review

In the Kitchen works best as a novel about work. Ali has done her homework on restaurant kitchens and weaving, and uses both as sustained metaphors for contrasting visions of society: the cohesive social fabric nostalgically remembered by Gabe's father and his peers, and the melting pot of Gabe's kitchen in the contemporary world of deregulated labour.
Guardian

Ali has chosen a workplace that, though familliar through television shows, remains fascinating, and the kitchen scenes are superb...Ali's prose is often beautiful and there are flashes of Brick Lane's buoyant comedy
Observer

With sometimes sly humor, Ali deftly sheds light on the irony of struggling in a land with abundant opportunities
Library Journal

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