Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Cook: A Novel
    The Cook: A Novel
    The Cook: A Novel
    Audiobook2 hours

    The Cook: A Novel

    Written by Maylis de Kerangal

    Narrated by Carly Robins

    3.5/5

    ()

    Switch to ebook

    About this audiobook

    One of BBC Culture's Ten Books to Read this March and The Rumpus Book Club Pick for March

    Maylis de Kerangal follows up her acclaimed novel The Heart with a dissection of the world of a young Parisian chef

    More like a poetic biographical essay on a fictional person than a novel, The Cook is a coming-of-age journey centered on Mauro, a young self-taught cook. The story is told by an unnamed female narrator, Mauro’s friend and disciple who we also suspect might be in love with him. Set not only in Paris but in Berlin, Thailand, Burma, and other far-flung places over the course of fifteen years, the book is hyperrealistic―to the point of feeling, at times, like a documentary. It transcends this simplistic form, however, through the lyricism and intensely vivid evocative nature of Maylis de Kerangal’s prose, which conjures moods, sensations, and flavors, as well as the exhausting rigor and sometimes violent abuses of kitchen work.

    In The Cook, we follow Mauro as he 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.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    TranslatorSam Taylor
    Release dateMar 26, 2019
    ISBN9781721364480
    Author

    Maylis de Kerangal

    Maylis de Kerangal (Toulon, 1967) ha trabajado en el mundo editorial y es autora, entre otras, de las novelas Je marche sous un ciel de traîne, La Vie voyageuse, Corniche Kennedy y Tangente vers l’est, y del libro de relatos Ni fleurs ni couronnes. En Anagrama ha publicado la novela Nacimiento de un puente, traducida a ocho idiomas y galardonada con los premios Médicis, Franz Hessel y Gregor von Rezzori: «No sólo se nos cuenta la historia de la construcción de un puente colgante en la californiana ciudad imaginaria de Coca, sino el destino de una decena de personajes venidos de diversos puntos del planeta para trabajar en tamaña empresa, que, a modo de vidas cruzadas, se nos muestran en un escenario tan poco común... Una panorámica a vista de pájaro sin casco ni protección del alma humana» (Ángeles López, La Razón); «Nacimiento de un puente es una novela que arrastra como una locomotora desalmada hasta la última página. Una gran novela. Casi trescientas páginas fulgurantes, apretadas y llenas de poderío y tensión» (Jesús Ferrero, El País); «Singular y sorprendente» (Iñaki Ezquerra, El Comercio).

    Related to The Cook

    Related audiobooks

    Literary Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Interlude

      Mar 28, 2022

      Interlude
      10 min read

    • Article

      The Heaven — The Earth

      Sep 10, 2022

      Instead of working on the Amtek account, William Morton stares at his wife’s Instagram. She stands near her black folding chair with hands on hips, a living cliché. He grabs his belly in discomfort. William Morton, VP-Sales, finds rolls of fat where

      18 min read

    • Article

      Memories Of A Miracle

      Dec 1, 2023

      Memories Of A Miracle
      8 min read

    • Article

      Like Ripe Fruit

      Nov 5, 2020

      Like Ripe Fruit
      7 min read

    • Article

      Cherubs

      Jul 5, 2023

      Cherubs
      10 min read

    • Article

      Three Poems

      Jul 1, 2023

      Jester-necked pile of ideasfattening by the cutting board.I have known the summer wall,it says slowly. The hillside facessouth into the valley.Dew on the tomato plants.Anything that grows, swarms,bunches itself against a stayand cannot stay. The vine

      4 min read

    • Article

      Ghost Girl, Banana

      Aug 21, 2023

      By the time I was 25, there were only two things I remembered about Mumma. The first was that she smelled of watermelons, the second was that we were happy. We’d taken our father’s name of course, but a name is only half a story. The other half exist

      6 min read

    • Article

      Marina’s Mission

      Jan 26, 2022

      Marina’s Mission
      7 min read

    • Article

      Marina’s Mission

      Jan 26, 2022

      Marina’s Mission
      7 min read

    • Article

      It’s Come to This

      Sep 1, 2021

      It’s Come to This
      16 min read

    • Article

      Three Poems

      Mar 1, 2019

      War is coming but my neighbors can’t believe it. I ring their doorbells and tell them: maybe not this May, but next June at the latest. They stare straight past me, at the maze of lawns, the sprinklers, a kid on a bike hurling the Globe onto porches.

      3 min read

    • Article

      My Year(s) In The Pyrenees

      Oct 22, 2018

      My Year(s) In The Pyrenees
      15 min read

    • Article

      Chop-chop

      Feb 6, 2020

      Chop-chop
      6 min read

    • Article

      The Posting

      Jun 27, 2023

      The Posting
      35 min read

    • Article

      The Walk Home

      Mar 29, 2021

      The Walk Home
      10 min read

    • Article

      Quantum Radio

      Feb 22, 2023

      Quantum Radio
      5 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Cook

    3.5/5

    25 ratings4 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 2/5
      While it was interesting seeing the life of a French cook, the story is far from gripping. Kerengel's other novel, The Heart, is a great book. This is mediocre.
    • 4/5
      The Cookby Maylis de KerangelTranslated by Sam Taylor2016Farrar,Straus, and Giroux4.0 / 5.0This is a memoir, written by a fictionalized cook, Mauro, and his culinary career in Berlin. Learning to bake cakes at 10 with no recipe, he went on to various jobs in restaurants, until finally opening one of his own. After 10 years he burnt out and sold it.This is amazingly deep for a novel that is about 100 pages. Mauro is vivid, earnest, humble and so easy to like. His career you want to follow.Entertaining and engaging.
    • 4/5
      You can feel the constant thrum of energy just below this man's surface.
    • 4/5
      This was a shortie, 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.