Thank you to the publisher for allowing me to read and review this ARC. Full review to be found on Goodreads and on my website.

3.5-⭐️: I enjoy foodie related texts, so this book has been in my queue for some time. While there aren’t any actual recipes noted, de Kerangal has a way of coloring the text surrounding various dishes, which perked me up as my eyes roamed the pages. Nothing too elaborate, this quiet book does not romanticize the life of a chef, in fact, it’s a little melancholic.

<i>The Cook</i> somehow impacted me on a subtle emotional level, despite the 3rd person POV. The surface level of the book comes off as a passive friend, remarking on the biography of a quiet chef. I think this is where the book is weakest; I wish to delve into the Mauro’s internal struggle, but at the same time, I recognize the drive. We don’t even know how close this friend is to him, but she’s this omnipresent perspective. It’s odd. Mauro’s rise and commitment is relatable, even for people outside of the food industry.

I’m going to reiterate that this is a quiet book, but a quickie. It’s enjoyable for an introspective experience. I like it, but I feel I’m at a loss for something.

I thank NetGalley for offering this book to me as a pre-read, despite me taking a whole year to get around to it! I ended up purchasing this book, and reviewed the final print for this review.

When you’re young, and you’re making decisions about school subjects and careers, there are inevitably pressures. For some kids, their passions line-up with family or social expectations. Lucky them. For others, expectations can steer them away from what they’d really, really like to be doing. I think we all know of that person who desperately wanted to be a carpenter or an artist or in advertising, yet they come from a ‘family of doctors’ and suddenly find their Year 12 dominated by chemistry and biology rather than graphic design. Personally speaking, I traded a Forestry degree for Environmental Planning – I think I probably would have ended up in the same place regardless but I can’t deny that my mum’s concerns about my being posted as a park ranger somewhere remote, didn’t go unheard.

The story of The Cook by Maylis de Kerangal begins along similar lines – Mauro is a young self-taught cook. While he has a natural flair for cookery and his bohemian parents encourage him to pursue it as a career, he chooses the security of a degree in economics. He works in a kitchen simply to pay his way through business school and to fund his travels. Eventually his love of cooking takes over and as Mauro travels from Paris to Berlin, Thailand, Lisbon and Burma we get snapshots of various cuisines, chefs, and kitchen politics.

The story is tightly condensed and yet you get to know Mauro via the unnamed female narrator. Quite frankly, I thought he was more smart-arse than wunderkind – his ego was as big as any of the chefs he scorned and he was prone to pontificating.

…he does have principles: junk food is a form of violence perpetrated against the poor; the mass-produced ready-meal a sign of the solitude of urban existence.

Cooking is not the shiny happy world they’re making it out to be; there’s not much affection… Violence is an old refrain in kitchens. Physical blows, thrown objects and utensils, burns, insults.

Kerangal’s writing has been described as poetic – there were certainly obvious and sure changes of pace, which gave energy to the kitchen scenes but not the frenzy captured in other stories such as Danler’s Sweetbitter. I was left thinking that if you wanted a kitchen a story, with its violence, creativity, and craziness, you really can’t go past Bourdain.

Following a recipe means matching sensory perceptions to verbs and nouns – and, for example, learning to distinguish what is diced from what is minced, and what is minced from what is chopped…

2.5/5 It does have a gorgeous cover…

I received my copy of The Cook from the publisher, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, via NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.

An atmospheric little translated novel about a young man with a lifelong love of cooking who approaches the profession from a bunch of oblique angles, unsure of where he wants to land. Form follows function here—the book itself flashes in and out of brilliantly illuminated scenes from his life, almost like sights glimpsed from a train window (and in fact the novel opens on a train, so that might not be so fanciful of an analogy). Told from the point of view of an unidentified close friend, it follows Paolo through the places he works, and then owns, during his early career as a cook or chef, and the episodic narration really gets at how intense—both wonderful and awful—working in a kitchen is at any level. Great food descriptions, too. Not sure how long de Kerangal could have sustained the story past the novella stage, but it works the way it is: a tasting menu, a series of amuse-bouches, rather than a heavy meal.

This short book from French writer Maylis de Kerangal reads more like a documentary or long journal article than a piece of fiction, but is none the less compelling for that. It’s the fictional biography of a young Parisian, Mauro, and his odyssey through the world of restaurants and cooking. Narrated by an unnamed friend, the tone is curiously detached as we follow his career in various establishments and in various countries. I found it an absorbing read in spite of its unemotional style, and I very much enjoyed accompanying Mauro as he built his career, with all the highs and lows this entailed. An interesting insight into the world of a chef, for sure.

I thoroughly enjoyed The Cook, a short novel of the life, growth, and adventures of a young wanna-be cook who ambles his way through France, Germany, Italy and back to France picking up skills and recipes and presentations as he goes, refining the art of food preparation as he matures into a chef extraordinaire.

I think you will enjoy Mauro, as well. I am pleased to recommend this novel, written in French by Maylis de Kerangal and translated by Sam Taylor, to friends and family.

I received a free electronic copy of this novel from Netgalley, Maylis de Kerangal, and Farrar, Straus & Giroux in exchange for an honest review. Thank you all for sharing your hard work with me.

As with a carefully composed and meticulously prepared gourmet meal, The Cook is a superbly rendered novella about an up-and-coming chef in Paris. Our cook has an advanced degree in economics, and yet, he is enthralled by the art of preparing food that will bring people together and by testing his own limits within the confines of a kitchen.

This novella is a beautiful tribute to food. If you are a foodie you will enjoy this book.

I would like to thank Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with a copy of this book free of charge. This is my honest and unbiased opinion of it.

This novella reads more like a personalized magazine article. It uses an unnamed female narrator (that she's female isn't immediately obvious and I'm not sure that it's even relevant) to trace the cooking history of Mauro. Each chapter is about another stop on his journey as a chef- and he travels the world. The descriptions of food are wonderful. My quibble (and this is a big one) is that there's no real heart here. That said, I did enjoy it. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. For fans of writing about food.

I'm a foodie, so this was a generally pleasant read for me. The way that this author writes about food is whimsical and enchanting, absolutely the highlight of this little story. I could have used more character development and less of a meandering plot. All in all, I found this book sweet and I'm happy that I read it. Not a favorite, but good.
Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing my digital ARC.

"The Cook" is an exploration of human passion: The novella follows Mauro, a young Parisian student and food enthusiast, on his path to becoming a professional cook, changing restaurants and travelling the world in order to widen his personal and professional horizon, constantly moving in oder to find his own destination. The story is told from the perspective of a friend about whom we learn next to nothing: She serves as a narrative device to track the protagonist's development, but also his changing appearance and state of mind. Mauro follows his ambition and encounters his own limitations, re-adjusts and tries to balance different aspects of his life without giving up on his passion - this book is a novel of development, set in the culinary world, that also discusses cultural aspects of cooking and dining, like food as art or as a communal experience.

I wouldn't subscribe that the text is "hyperrealistic" (as the blurb claims for some reason), but the narration certainly plays with the detachment of the journalistic report, which gives the text a special feel. On top of that, Sam Taylor did an excellent job with the translation (as you would expect from the guy who translated Binet's hyper-complex HHhH). This book certainly made me want to read more Maylis de Kerangal.

This is a pleasant enough little book, composed of scenes in the life of a fictional chef named Mauro. Each chapter picks up with the young man at a different point as he travels through Europe, studying and working in various restaurants. He began his informal apprenticeship as a teen when he made hearty, gourmet-ish meals for his five friends. Gradually you work out that the narrator is a female friend. Thankfully, she doesn’t idealize Mauro; she realistically portrays his faults (workaholic, anyone?), his cynicism and his occasional depression.

If you’ve read The Heart / Mend the Living, you’ll know that de Kerangal writes exquisite prose. Here the descriptions of meals are mouthwatering, and the kitchen’s often tense relationships come through powerfully. (And, luckily, the author doesn’t include lots of abstruse vocabulary words this time.) Overall, though, I’m not hugely enthusiastic. My average rating reflects the fact that I didn’t know what all these scenes are meant to add up to. Who is this Mauro in the end, and what does it matter? Kitchens of the Great Midwest, a linked short story collection, does a better job of capturing a chef and her milieu. (Out March 26th.)

Readalike: The Gourmet by Muriel Barbary

A favorite passage: “He is youthful, calm, saturnine, furtive. A cat. A Perrier with a slice of lemon. But what I need to describe are his hands. They work, work all the time; they are high-caliber tools, sensitive instruments that create, touch, test—sensors.”

'To be a chef, you have to be prepared to get hurt.'

The Cook is a fictional novel about the making of Parisian chef Mauro told from his friend’s perspective. In the beginning he is remembering his University days, knowing he will not go back, and the summer he meets his first cook that ‘introduces him to another realm’, and Mauro ‘loves how she lives’ connected as she is to the earth, the seasons and the farm which he works with all the fresh vegetables. In a moment, later in an apartment he finds a book on cooking in his duffel bag, and everything shifts.

We travel back through the days of his youth when the young gastronome was a curious little fellow often hovering around in the kitchen, inhaling the smells of his mother and grandmother’s cooking. His first meals are made from simple, cheap foods but later he will travel to different countries, broadening his food education, creating recipes from different cultures, absorbing different sights and smells. He will perfect the alchemy of the kitchen, where at ten he will create cakes from recipes, as if it’s like a magical act. Later he will learn the brutality of the kitchen, suffer the tyranny of demanding chefs, work in kitchens of many cultures and burn himself out once he is running La Belle Saison, ‘until finally his life is reduced to the surface of a countertop.’ But it will not be the end of his cooking, he will return to his passion but only in places where it is for the love of cooking alone, far from ‘chain restaurants’ and overwhelming crowds. Mauro truly lives the life of a chef, with little free time as hones his skills. Too often friendships fall by the wayside, because there isn’t any time, his world truly is reduced to his career.

To escape the deadened feeling within him, his exhaustion, he later finds himself in Asia. He is done with frantic and wants peace, despite the offers that pour in. Some travel to see the wonderous sites, Mauro prefers to sink into the culture of the palate wherever he wanders. He never stays still for long, seeking other work in many kitchen until the tail end of the book where he has an idea for a place that caters to the diners, a ‘collective adventure’ that also pleases individual desires.

It’s not simply a book about working your way into becoming a chef, it’s about the emotional journey, the shaping of a chef’s life. Mauro isn’t your usual cook either, he is looking for meaning on a spiritual level in a sense, which you don’t usually get when reading about chefs. I think from the beginning when he opens his eyes to the farm, nature to the table, the sense of community means he could never be content to waste his days in a popular place that bustles. It’s a fast read, I wonder if I would have been engaged more if Mauro himself told his story and I could be in his head rather than feeling more like a fly on the wall, a second hand witness of sorts as his friend does all the talking. It was a decent read, a different perspective on a chef’s life, which truly is much more exhausting than I ever imagined. I cook often and it’s tiring but that’s solely for my family. It is certainly a physical endeavor, for Mauro it is all-consuming. I certainly don’t have to take anyone pushing me around or knocking me in the face with a spoon if I screw up. All that waits for me is sour faces pushing their plate away and refusing to eat. There is a love story within too but that doesn’t last because his first love is food, and it demands all of him. He is lost at times, burned out, but he always wanders the world chasing the next place, trying to fill his culinary knowledge. The Cook is an original little novel. I would like more connection to Mauro, yet it is still worth the read.

Publication Date: March 26, 2019

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

I usually love food books - but for some reason, I could not get into this one at all. Nothing about it grabbed me - maybe some of the beauty of it was lost in translation?

Three stars because it had a few decent food moments and it wasn't a bad book by any means - it just didn't grip me like most food books do.

This was a quick and enjoyable read.

The story flowed well and since I have a few friends who are chefs, it was also believable.

First time I’ve read this author, will definetely read again!

The way de Kerangal writes about food is lyrical and mesmerizing, and The Cook transported me to wonderful culinary places. I just wanted more from this book - more character development, more travels, more time with the story. It felt like a great start to a book rather than a finished product.

A "must read" for foodies! A wonderful short novel you can easily read in an hour or so. An unseen narrator follows a young Frenchman as he becomes a chef. At once a coming-of-age novella and a description of the restaurant scene in Paris, this book flows beautifully and engages the reader with just enough detail to keep one's interest before moving along to a new restaurant, a new city, a new stage of life. Excellent!

The Cook by Maylis de Kerangal (translated by Sam Taylor) is a fictional biography of Mauro, a young man who dreams of working as a cook / chef. Ms. de Kerangal is a prize winning French author.

Mauro always wanted to cook, he loves food and the process to make it edible. Over fifteen years Mauro works all over the world, Paris, Thailand, Burma and more honing his craft.

The story, told through the eyes of a friend, follows Mauro from childhood where he bakes cakes, to his teen age years, his jobs in the industry and a nervous breakdown. The friend, in love with Mauro, documents these events in vivid detail.

If I learned anything from The Cook by Maylis de Kerangal (translated by Sam Taylor) is that I never want to work in a kitchen. I do enjoy cooking and baking breads, but I never had the desire to punish myself as a professional in that industry.

This is a short book, a fast read, but very lyrical and imaginative. Mauro, the subject of this book, loves to cook and tries to find himself through various cuisines throughout the world. Even venturing into opening his own restaurant.

Mauro’s life is intense, always a struggle in a fast paced world which he thrives on. Unlike many in his line of work, Maruro does not take it lightly when being humiliated and has the confidence and ability to simply walk out on when being abused.

The dedication which is needed to become a chef is something which I always found admirable, and a bit crazy as well. The hospitality industry can be unforgiving, at best and it takes a committed, hardworking, and a diligent person to be successful in it.

At first, I thought the cook would read like a biography but lively. It is, instead, much more like a documentary. Granted, it was interesting and informative, but I'm not enough of a foodie to fully appreciate this book.

I received this from netgalley.com in exchange for a review.

Mauro finds his path in life: baking cakes as a child; cooking for his friends as a teenager; a series of studies, jobs, and travels; a failed love affair; a successful business; a virtual nervous breakdown; and—at the end—a rediscovery of his hunger for cooking, his appetite for life.

Fast read. Focusing on cooking, the terminology, and lots of foodie talk. It really did feel like some kind of a documentary. As much as I really wanted to like this book, it was a dry read for me.

2☆