In The Kitchen

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

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

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

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

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

The Times

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

Mail on Sunday

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

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

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

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

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

Independent on Sunday

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

Entertainment Weekly

Deeply flawed and wildly sympathetic [...] Gabriel Lightfoot is an unforgettable protagonist, his descent into lunacy frighteningly recognizable, individual, profound

O, The Oprah Magazine

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

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

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

Library Journal

The author of the famed 2003 novel "Brick Lane" has delivered an entertaining, poignant tale

Cleveland Plain Dealer

Dazzingly describes the manic goings-on in the kitchen of a central London hotel

The Sunday Times

Ali skilfully seasons her stew of a plot ...A cleverly written tale of lust, trafficking and ambition, In the Kitchen has pace and intrigue and a dash of piquant humour.

Financial Times