All in all, Jervey Tervalon’s
novel Monster’s Chef is a really pleasant surprise, although most of what happens
in the novel is anything but pleasant. I picked this up on a whim at the
library and found a lot of it to be quite good, even if sometimes it back away
from some of the book’s harsher moments. It feels like a short, swift noir
piece that is filled with intrigue, but never really seems to pay anything off.
That isn’t to say that this book isn’t good at all. I found some of the scenes
to be quite eerie, especially when it is mixed with a somewhat harmless plot. It
creates a lot of tension and a weirdly Lynchian atmosphere of the normal and
the grotesque. Even if the book was not as good as I thought it should have
been, those scenes still gave me the creeps. The focus of the novel is on a man
named Gibson, who was once a prominent chef in New York City, but after a freak
drug bust uncovered his addiction, he is without a job or his beautiful wife Elena.
After losing everything, he takes a job as the personal chef of music mogul
Monster, whose mysterious nature is only dwarfed by his unconscious cruelty
towards others. He has a mute wife no one is allowed to talk to and guards that
seem to carry out his every cruel deed. When the body of a young boy is found
on Monster’s labyrinthine property, a series of events uncovers the music mogul’s
nefarious activities. The scenes involving Thug, Monster’s bodyguard, are the creepiest;
acting again like brute in a David Lynch movie whose sole purpose is to carry
out evil. But it is never as shocking or derailing as the build-up makes it out
to be, wrapping things up with a bit of a cop-out ending. Still, this book is worth
your time if you want something a little different.
Rating: 4/5
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