The Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs

Seattle Times

Compelling....All the characters in this book, even the minor ones, are drawn with scary accuracy in Welsh's unusual voice.— Mark Lindquist

Details

“Emotional honesty—plus jokes that actually work.”

Philadelphia Week

“What begins as a narrative-switching character study quickly veers into Chuck Palahniuk territory....Hilarious insight into everything from foodie culture to the dark side of Star Trek conventions.”

Los Angeles Times Book Review

Succeeds on the strength of its tart sentences and bleak atmospherics. And the Jekyll-and-Hyde routine keeps the pages turning, even as it puts a fresh slant on that time-honored phrase, the Significant Other.— James Marcus

James Marcus - Los Angeles Times Book Review

“Succeeds on the strength of its tart sentences and bleak atmospherics. And the Jekyll-and-Hyde routine keeps the pages turning, even as it puts a fresh slant on that time-honored phrase, the Significant Other.”

Mark Lindquist - Seattle Times

“Compelling....All the characters in this book, even the minor ones, are drawn with scary accuracy in Welsh's unusual voice.”

Publishers Weekly

Welsh, who will probably never live down Trainspotting (1993), gets considerable comic mileage from dual Edinburgh protagonists and their disparate perspectives. Danny Skinner is the bad boy of the local restaurant inspection office, partying hearty, keeping irregular hours and doing just enough to keep a tenuous hold on his job and on longtime girlfriend Kay, a dancer. The arrival at the office of eager-to-please Brian Kibby, a virginal nerd fresh from university, completely throws off Danny's game and draws his unmitigated ire ("Another fucking clone, another Foy arse-licking sycophant"). As Brian's father lays dying, Danny, who never knew his father, sets out to discover his father's identity; meanwhile, smarmy celebrity chef Alan De Fretais, with his filthy kitchen, brings things to a buddy-movie flashpoint. With plenty of plot movement-Danny journeys to America; Brian falls prey to a mysterious illness that requires Danny to really function at work-and rich characters, the novel keeps the reader entertained with a full-bodied (those kitchens are hot and cramped) view of life's ironies. It's eminently filmable, but not in the manner of its illustrious predecessor; Welsh's expansive storytelling and archly imaginative humor now suggest a more aggro John Irving. 7-city author tour. (Aug. 7) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Don't be misled by the voyeuristic title to expect a feast of food and sex. Actually, this is a tale of hate between two young Edinburgh Environmental Health officers-Danny, an alcoholic who blames his addiction on the absence of a father, and Brian, a shy model railroad enthusiast who resorts to masturbation to release his sexual fantasies. Brian finds Danny intimidating, yet Danny thinks that it is Brian's effeminacy that drives him to feel this way. Mysteriously, every time Brian lapses into pain from an unidentifiable virus, the otherwise healthy Danny experiences an identical pain. Scottish writer Welsh does a commendable job of weaving a common thread between rivals, but he fails to project the same fresh and witty voice he presented in Trainspotting, instead preferring to concoct a novel following a more popular recipe that includes punk music, video games, drugs, religious upbringing, politics, voudou, and murders. The result will arouse the adrenaline of some readers but will leave die-hard Welsh fans hungry. Recommended for public libraries.-Victor Or, Vancouver & Surrey P.L., B.C. Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

The dangerous symbiotic relationship embracing two profoundly different protagonists forms the core of Scottish-born Welsh's seventh novel. "Environmental Health Officer" Danny Skinner inspects restaurants for the Edinburgh City Council, whenever not drinking to blissful excess or pleasuring himself with gorgeous girlfriend Kay. Danny's bilious contempt for grandstanding celebrity chef Alan De Fretais (whose bestselling amalgam of culinary and erotic advice provides Welsh's splendid title) draws the ire of his superiors-and opens doors for his nondescript new colleague Brian Kibby. The latter is an innocuous virginal innocent, whose mystification over Danny's inexplicable contempt for him is exacerbated by his father's lingering fatal illness, and its effects on his frail mother, Joyce. When Danny is stricken with a "mystery virus" that seems to replicate his father's ordeal, Danny feels his arrogant cocksureness begin to crumble ("He had come to regard Kibby as his mirror, a road map of his own mortality"). Attempting to mend his dissolute ways, Danny heads for California to seek the father he never knew-but returns to Edinburgh unenlightened, as Brian (who has made a surprising, if incomplete recovery) falls into a pattern of righteous anger that further complicates their compulsive mutual obsessions. The truth about Danny's heritage, far darker and more despairing than Danny imagines, is in fact buried in the Kibby family's history. And it stuns them both with savage ironic force in the novel's extended climax, provoked by Danny's romantic interest in Brian's sister Caroline, and a long-untold story finally rescued from silence. Welsh braids these dramatic particulars together withconsiderable skill, despite a slackening of intensity in segments narrated by peripheral characters, and the relegation of the title subplot to almost incidental status. Nevertheless, the narrative doesn't let up, and the hammerblows keep landing. Something new from the antic provocateur whose recent books have been frustratingly uneven. Welsh's best since his spectacular debut novel Trainspotting.

From the Publisher

“An exquisitely-paced, black comedy with clever and funny things to say.”
–Evening Standard