cover image Chop Chop

Chop Chop

Simon Wroe. Penguin Press, $27 (276p) ISBN 978-1-59420-579-8

In his fiction debut, Wroe, a freelance journalist and former chef, invents (or possibly recalls) the life of a chef. The narrator, Monocle, is so nicknamed by his fellow chefs because of his English degree. He is an aspiring writer living in London’s Camden Town, who, in order to pay rent, unwillingly accepts a job at a restaurant called the Swan, where he suffers the bizarre and darkly comical torment of his boss, Bob, a culinary dictator (“Bob wanted soldiers, psychopaths, and masochists”). Amid the diabolical name-calling and the intentional spilling of boiling caramel to ensure his workers have real chef hands, Bob orchestrates an array of undeserved disciplinary actions for his workers. The worst punishment is a time-out in the refrigerator—next to live lobsters that Bob personally detanks for the occasion. Despite his suffering, Monocle returns to the stove daily, out of stubbornness inherited from his unsupportive and egocentric father. Then Bob’s tyranny is challenged with the arrival of crafty and crude chef Ramilov—who also threatens the future of the Swan. Wroe’s imaginative metaphors and gritty kitchen colloquialisms are the key ingredients in a story that will appeal to anyone with a taste for the morbid and the whimsical. (Apr.)