The Kitchen Man

By Ira Wood

Book Overview

In this delightful, laugh-out-loud first novel, Gabe Rose, the brash Jewish waiter with a play in his pocket, is looking for his big chance. Where else to find it but at the gilded, overpriced tables of Boston's fanciest restaurant, where crooked politicians, tight Old Money, preppies, parvenus and, of course, the stars come to dine on yesterday's fish under tonight's hollandaise? Under-30 Gabe contrives to meet over-40 Cynthia Kagan, a tough, sexy playwright-director, big in feminist circles...Plot and character are pas de deux under Wood's fast-stepping, always engaging choreography, but how to explain all the sharp and colorful, emotionally honest, sometimes heart-grabbing ensemble work? Besides the fun, The Kitchen Man is about love and loyalty outside conventional categories of age, gender and body proportions, a gamey kind of You Can't Take It With You with extremely recognizable people.-Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

An excerpt from The Kitchen Man

Everyone else I know accepts temporary malaise, the blues, as an ordinary human infirmity like the flu and sees nothing wrong with a few lackluster days of self-pampering and doughy lying about. But my own chosen love, my Cynthia, the caramel center of my bittersweet life, views depression as indistinguishable from masturbation and weight lifting: a waste of limited male energy.

I admit it. The tides of my disposition fluctuate with my luck at the mail box. Following this morning's letter of rejection I returned to the house with the glazed, magnetized eyes of the children of the damned.

"Uh oh," was all Cynthia said.

"Maybe it's a sign. Maybe I should give up playwriting. Finally admit it. No, I do not have any talent. It's time I grew up, accepted the fact that some people have it and some people never will."

She waited for me to finish. It is no secret that in her women's group I am known as Uncle Vanya.

"Maybe I should just give up and find something I'm good at."

"How about pottery? Or the guitar," she said. "Definitely. The guitar. And give yourself a solid month. Then if the Rolling Stones don't ask you to join them, take up, let's see, sand painting." According to Cynthia you don't pout about rejections

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0965457834
• ISBN13: 9780965457835
• Release Date: June 2009
• Publisher: Leapfrog Press
• Length: 306 Pages
• Weight: 1.07 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

A man for all the rooms of the house

Women who read this book are very grateful for a male character they can actually like. As a feminist, I think this is extremely important.Gabe is real - smart, funny, not a male model, beset by worries and a MENCH. He tries to do the right thing for the right reasons.Relationships take work and this novel shows people who work constructively.Looking forward to another novel. Are you listening "Woody?"

Be a mensch

We follow Gabe's dilemma - being a waiter, wanting to be a writer, but becoming a lover to a woman, who should be his employee. Personal matters are splitting him up to the crucial point, when he decides, what's the most important thing in his life. Wood has written a story of life, which often happens in reality, he only added some glamour to it and a happy ending (which is not so common in real life). I like it.