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The Cook

3.67 of 5 stars 3.67 · rating details · 109 ratings · 46 reviews

A delicious satire of our contemporary obsession with food, cooking and fine dining, The Cook is a wild and darkly funny novel.
Zac, a teenage boy with a difficult past, throws himself into the world and work of haute cuisine but when sweet turns sour, his mind turns from first-class service to revenge.
Published to rave reviews in the UK, Australia.

Paperback, 245 pages

Published October 3rd 2011 by Text Publishing

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Feb 18, 2012 Janice marked it as abandoned · review of another edition

Shelves: first-reads

I can't read this book. There is no punctuation within the sentences. I find it too distracting to try and figure out the sentence and to be thinking about the lack of commas, quotation marks, sentence structure. I picture Sally from TC writhing in utter agony.

One newspaper reviewer said it was "astonishingly original". (Oops in keeping with the style of the book that sentence should have read one newspaper reviewer said it was astonishingly original.)

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Nov 07, 2011 C. rated it 4 of 5 stars

Recommended to C. by: MU bookshop

Shelves: australian, own-or-access, 2011

My god that was disturbing, and not just the ending.

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Mar 07, 2013 David Hebblethwaite rated it 3 of 5 stars

Zac is a young offender whose rehabilitation is to be sent to a rural cookery school run by a famous chef.

Here Zac finds his calling when he discovers the world of fine food. While others on the scheme fall by the wayside, Zac diligently pursues his craft, studying classical French cookery books; breeding his own lambs for his dishes. After leaving the school he is given a job as the private chef to a wealthy Melbourne family. Zac sees this as good practice for his dream of opening a high-end re...more

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Feb 22, 2013 Lisa rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: australia, 21st-century, cooking

Remember that riveting book Under the Skin by Michael Faber? A macabre mystery that by covenant amongst reviewers kept its dark secret quiet so that each reader could experience the shock? I hope The Cook receives the same respect because it’s so brilliantly done, it would be a shame to have it spoiled by careless reviews.

How best, then, to review it here? Carefully, carefully. Enough to entice you to find a copy and read it, not enough to spoil it….

Well then, it’s the story of Zac, a boy from t...more

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Nov 07, 2012 Mark Staniforth rated it 3 of 5 stars

Take Anthony Bourdain's 'Kitchen Confidential'. Add a heap of rabid ambition and a glug - no, make that a bucket-full - of gore, and you get, more or less, Wayne Macauley's wildly entertaining tale of a teenage delinquent turned aspiring chef, 'The Cook'.
Actually, for all its obvious comparisons with Bourdain's biographical account of his life in the world's high-end, high-testosterone kitchens, it has to be stressed that as a work of fiction, 'The Cook' is entirely unique.
This is the account of...more Take Anthony Bourdain's 'Kitchen Confidential'. Add a heap of rabid ambition and a glug - no, make that a bucket-full - of gore, and you get, more or less, Wayne Macauley's wildly entertaining tale of a teenage delinquent turned aspiring chef, 'The Cook'.
Actually, for all its obvious comparisons with Bourdain's biographical account of his life in the world's high-end, high-testosterone kitchens, it has to be stressed that as a work of fiction, 'The Cook' is entirely unique.
This is the account of seventeen-year-old Zac, who is given the choice of either going to a young offenders' institution or enrolling in a rehabilitation scheme that teachers troubled teenagers how to cook. The more Zac learns, the more he becomes convinced he has found his true calling in life, and the more determined he is to succeed, whatever it takes.
Armed with a copy of 'Larousse' plucked from the kitchen shelves, Zac immerses himself in basic techniques before he becomes, like Bourdain, obsessed with stretching boundaries, until his nascent desire to serve, to please, to succeed, threatens to spiral dangerously out of control.
This is not a book for avowed vegetarians or the easily queazy. There is a lot of fattening and slaughtering involved. Try this bite-sized chunk for size:

'My next challenge was agnelet. Milk lamb three to four weeks old four to five kilos in weight born in winter raised indoors fed milk only the meat very tender and delicate. I moved my lamb pens closer to the house and made three more for my pregnant ewes each ewe a bit bigger that than the next. I got Terry to show me how to spot a pregnant one and the ones I spotted I put in my pens. The trick with agnelet is to control the mother how she lives what she eats I fed these mothers quality lucerne up to about three weeks before delivery then intensely fed then a mixture of grain rosemary pinot noir and sea salt after that. This way the unborn lamb could take up via the placenta some of those flavours quite focussed and intense in utero then softened after birth when I bottle-fed it on high-fat cow's milk and whisked raw eggs. At slaughter I would have a lamb subtly flavoured with a bit of its mother's old grassiness but overlaid with hints of grain rosemary wine and salt yet exceptionally tender on account of the milk and eggs.'

Macauley's riotous tale is made all the more urgent by his employment of a colloquial first-person vernacular, bringing Zac's scatter-gun, hundred-mile-an-hour thought processes brilliantly to the page. It's as if the narrator has scribbled down these notes while he's half-watching a pan on the stove. While it takes some time to tune into, this works fabulously: Zac is, after all, a troubled and presumably relatively uneducated teenager, thus his narrative becomes increasingly mashed up with expressions gleaned from the cookbooks he scours.
All of which imbues this book with a fierce readability, propelling you through the pages with the simple desire to discover whether Zac succeeds. And I am not even going to hint at what transpires, beyond saying that you are very unlikely to read a more memorable ending to a book this year. A fun, high-octane, Bourdain-busting book. And, I should imagine, a real talking point if someone you know unwraps it just before they plonk the Christmas turkey in the oven.(less)

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Sep 11, 2012 Le koala Lit rated it 4 of 5 stars

Je n’avais jamais lu un roman comme celui ci. Tout d’abord, un style particulier, sans ponctuation (sauf des points et majuscules) ce qui ralenti un peu la lecture. Mais aussi, un rythme parlé, qui nous fait suivre le fil des pensées de Zac, ses obsessions et sa minutie dans la préparation de chaque plat.
Je ne sais pas par où commencer.

Text Publishing

Zac à 16 ans lorsqu’il intègre Cook School. Il est issu d’un milieu défavorisé mais trouve sa voie dans la cuisine, et veut à tout prix atteindre l...more Je n’avais jamais lu un roman comme celui ci. Tout d’abord, un style particulier, sans ponctuation (sauf des points et majuscules) ce qui ralenti un peu la lecture. Mais aussi, un rythme parlé, qui nous fait suivre le fil des pensées de Zac, ses obsessions et sa minutie dans la préparation de chaque plat.
Je ne sais pas par où commencer.

Text Publishing

Zac à 16 ans lorsqu’il intègre Cook School. Il est issu d’un milieu défavorisé mais trouve sa voie dans la cuisine, et veut à tout prix atteindre l’excellence. Pour lui, Chef est un dieu et il veut suivre son exemple « Le pouvoir par le service ».
« Soit prêt je me disais reste concentré. Nous sommes ici pour servir nous sommes des esclaves de l’industrie du service à travers le service nous triomphons. Y a-t-il une culture dans l’histoire qui n’ait pas d’esclaves qui pensez-vous a construit les pyramides les pharaons ? »

A Cook School, il apprend à s’occuper des agneaux pour qu’il soit le plus tendre (et délicieux) possible, cultive ses légumes, travaille sans relâche pour impressionner Chef qui ne vient jamais.
Après plusieurs mois à l’école, il ne reste plus que lui. Il se fait engager comme cuisinier à domicile dans une famille riche. Il flaire l’opportunité de faire ses premières armes, et veut impressionner ses nouveaux maîtres. Tout lui est offert sur un plateau, carte de crédit illimité pour acheter les produits les plus chers, une voiture de luxe pour aller faire les courses, une cuisine où il est le maître.

Il rêve d’ouvrir son propre restaurant L’insouciant et il est suffisamment entêté pour y arriver.

C’est un roman très sombre. L’auteur porte un regard cynique sur la société. Je referme le livre intriguée, un peu horrifiée.

C’est drôle parce que, en choisissant ce livre, je ne m’attendais pas a cela. Ce livre m’a fait vivre une expérience perturbante, parce qu’il ne suit en rien la construction habituelle du roman.

Le blog The Medusa vs. the Odalisque vous donnera une critique plus approfondie.

Publié par Text Publishing en Octobre 2011(less)

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Aug 23, 2012 Simone rated it 5 of 5 stars

This book was facinating. I really enjoyed this book, there was no anxt because the main character Zac was a sociopath and we all know that they don't feel much in the way of anxt.

The author wrote a complex, layered story in a very interesting way. The writing was, for the most part without puncutation. This could have been because the main character was uneducated and the narrative was completely from his point of view. I think that the author did it to make us think about what Zac was really s...more

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Mar 28, 2012 Annabel Smith rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: australian, unreliable-narrator

Wayne McCauley’s third novel The Cook is a satire about a group of disadvantaged youths who are given a second chance to make something of themselves at Cook School. The novel pokes fun at the cult of celebrity chefs and reality television but it also engages with class issues and the impact of the global financial crisis.

The story is told from the point of view of Zac, a ruthlessly ambitious Cook School student, who is so single-minded in his goal of changing his life through this opportunity t...more

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Jan 01, 2012 Anna rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: hard-tack, political-animal

So Wayne Macauley, a satirist worth his salt, has been round for a while. Good ole’ Black Pepper Press took a punt on his skewered cheese-dreams of Australian aspiration. Not just suburban oiks, the obvious target, but those artistes applying for the wafer-thin dinner mints of grant funding and greater glory. Check out his early books.

But not before you read this one. My, this is a good book. If Jude the Obscure was obsessed by making it to Masterchef instead of Christminister you might get an i...more So Wayne Macauley, a satirist worth his salt, has been round for a while. Good ole’ Black Pepper Press took a punt on his skewered cheese-dreams of Australian aspiration. Not just suburban oiks, the obvious target, but those artistes applying for the wafer-thin dinner mints of grant funding and greater glory. Check out his early books.

But not before you read this one. My, this is a good book. If Jude the Obscure was obsessed by making it to Masterchef instead of Christminister you might get an inkling of the flavor.

Zach the delinquent trained on a TV-chef’s farm with a group of other fuck-ups takes like a zealot to the filet-knife, the butchering, the prep. But like Jude he understands nothing; his vision of where he will go is so myopic, so focussed, he misses the perilousness of his day-to-day life. He is used. He is in the hands of others.

He’s also entirely, suffocatingly creepy. Macauley gives us just enough of Zach in reflective mode to grasp that he feels very little. Shame is his engine. He freaks people out with this.

My only quibble with the book was the deliberate lack of punctuation. It felt like an ruse to elict better concentration from the reader. I read closely, but punctuation helps to slow me down, find repose. It seemed unnecessary.

Things do not end well. But the larger picture is as frightening as the denouement. In the world of food - working class butchers, obsequious deli owners, farmers, even celebrity chefs - things are broken. The dream of money and fame, the aspirational velocity that Australians have been repeatedly told is what we all should have - it’s in tatters.

And therein lies the true wonder of this novel. The dread. The dystopia. The Global Financial Crisis hangs over it as palpably as the fear of nuclear Armageddon hung over Gen X dinosaurs like myself in the early eighties. Remember, Ronald Reagan was going to start bombing in five minutes.

All that Masterchef glitz turns out to be bread and circuses. And I’m talking supermarket sawdust snags and fairy loaf.
(less)

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Dec 15, 2012 Marg rated it 4 of 5 stars

The Cook by Wayne Macauley was released here in Australia last year by Text Publishing. I had certainly heard of it, and I had meant to read it before now but I just hadn't quite managed to do so yet. I borrowed it from the library a few weeks ago. When it was named as the most under-rated book of 2012 I knew I had to make an effort to actually read it. The award "aims to shine a light on some of the fantastic titles that are released by independent publishers and members of the Small Press Netw...more

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Jan 09, 2013 Sally906 rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: australian-author, general-fiction

The first thing that hit me about this book was the punctuation – there isn’t any – a pet hate of mine. I have been known to not read the book and strike an author off my ‘to read’ list if they dare do it. God gave us full stops, commas, quotation marks and the rest for a reason – to use – for clarification and understanding. BUT – there was something about the story that kept me reading despite my scratching my head and reading a paragraph more than once to try and figure out the flow. THE COOK...more

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Oct 16, 2011 Fred rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: people with strong stomachs who like recent Australian fiction with an edge

Recommended to Fred by: I bought it myself, no recommendations

Bought this one with my would-be chef son in mind, and fortunately read it first. It's very entertaining, though it's often a bit hard to empathise with the protagonist. It's written as a diary, and the deliberately dodgey (read "almost non-existent") grammar is interesting while still easy to understand. Very Australian (half in the bush outside Melbourne, half in the seriously wealthy suburbs of Melb) with a good sense of place. Parts of it are really funny, but sometimes the satire gets a bit...more

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Oct 03, 2011 Jillwilson rated it 3 of 5 stars

I reviewed this book for Readings as part of their 'Uncorrected Proofs' club. That bit was fun. My review is here:
http://www.readings.com.au/product/97...

He is a very good writer. I would score this book 3 and 1/2 stars if I could. I didn't really love the book despite the cleverness but after reading, I did a bit of fossicking around in the web - as you do - and found a story of his that I liked - he is very versatile I think.

This is a link to his story about a dancing bear. It's called 'Reply...more

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Jul 13, 2012 Kathy rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: abc-bookclub

I enjoyed this book, even though usually the intentional lack of punctuation bothers me. I settled into the rhythm smoothly enough and it did contribute to the effect the author wanted to have. It wouldn’t have been as successful if it had normal writing.

The book is filled with a lot of in-depth depiction of cooking processes and also a focus on using the freshest and best ingredients. I had to skim through the pages of where the character was dealing with the butchering of animals but I agree...more

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Oct 26, 2011 Sophie rated it 5 of 5 stars

Seventeen year-old Zac has been chosen to attend the exclusive Cook School, a program for underprivileged youths run by a famous chef. Here he discovers a passion for cooking, and dreams of becoming a world-famous chef with his own restaurant. Eventually he lands a job as the personal chef for a very wealthy family, but things start to go a bit wrong...

This is very far from being a feel-good inspirational novel, but a darkly humourous and satirical look at the celebrity chef phenomenon and haute...more

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Dec 02, 2012 Felicity rated it 5 of 5 stars

Intriguing and thought provoking

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May 26, 2013 Kimbofo rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: commonwealth-fiction

I thought the Brits were obsessed with cooking shows and celebrity chefs, until I got sucked into watching MasterChef Australia on satellite TV last year. The series, which is based on the original British MasterChef but is 100 times more sensational and loud and bombastic, was screened six nights a week for several months and turned cooking into an Olympic-like sport. It was so over-the-top ridiculous (and puffed-up) that most of the time I watched it so that I could take the mickey out of the...more

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Aug 28, 2012 Petty Witter rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The story of one young man's determination and almost obsessive desire to succeed no matter what the cost, I found The Cook an interesting, if not always enjoyable or easy, read.

Given the current debate on organic foods and the fact that many children know little of how the food they eat is produced this was a topical and timely read though as a non-meat eater I found much of it a little too graphic.

Written in the first person by main character, Zac, a young man of limited education. At first...more

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Feb 27, 2012 Heathercheryl Stevenson rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: goodreads-advance-reading-copy

I won an advance reading copy of The Cook from Goodreads. This is a very difficult book to read, not because of content but for some reason the paragraphs have no punctuation and I find myself having to go back over sentences(?), trying to decipher where each sentence begins and ends. What a distraction. I have almost given up a few times but in spite of the lack of simple punctuation, the story is mildly interesting. Can't say more than mildly because of all the distraction. I will add to this...more

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Jan 15, 2012 Rosemary rated it 4 of 5 stars

What rollicking story written by a boy from the wrong side of the tracks who ends up in a cooking school for 'delinquent' older teens in the country near Melbourne. It is funny, thought-provoking (e.g. the class system, what is important in life) and has a couple of sys prising twists. It doesn't take long to read. Too bad our book group (a bit serious our book group) didn't select it for one of our monthly reads, but it was a suggestion. Enjoy!

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May 27, 2012 Paul Carter rated it 5 of 5 stars

An original distinctive voice and an alluring gastronomic journey. This book is essentially a knife to the gut of capitalist excesses, cooked in a sweet sauce of streaming consciousness and served up with a story that subverts any concepts the reader might have on the service industry.

It is a true pleasure to sit down with although I would not recommend it to the weak hearted - the twist at the end is shocking and sickening. I guarantee you won’t want to put it down.

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Jan 24, 2013 Linda rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is a tough read, but worth the effort. The style is difficult at first, but you soon become used to it. I felt increasingly uncomfortable with the story, and wanted to give it away several times, but I persevered and, wow, what an ending! The difficulty and the uncomfortableness are meant to be there -- in this sense it's like reading Lolita, though the books are worlds apart in every other sense.

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Mar 27, 2013 Gosia rated it 4 of 5 stars

It's a slow burner, but it is worth to read it. I didn't mind the lack of punctuation, as I think it reflexed the humble upbringing of the main character - Zac, and his stream of thoughts. His vocabulary expands as the story progresses, but intensity of thinking and analysing doesn't slow down. As a reader you know the story is spiralling into the dramatic ending, but it's nothing I've imagined. Let's just say : no wonder Nick Cave liked it ;) Good read.

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Jan 09, 2012 Susanne rated it 2 of 5 stars

I thought this was a bad made good type of story, I was wrong. I enjoyed the story with all the cooking terms, techniques etc. But it felt like the last couple of chapters were put in just for shock value rather than to make a good story. I loathed the lack of punctuation in the book, athough I realise the author was trying to write in a certain style - it just made the book difficult to read.

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Apr 02, 2013 skippity_doo rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A really unusual novel. The style certainly took a little getting used to, and there were definitely times when I had to re-read passages to work out the intended syntax, but I quite liked this aspect of the book. Zac's head is an odd place to be and the prose certainly reflects that.

Plot is enjoyable if slow burning, but for me this enhances the impact of the twist at the end.

I don't think it's five star superlative, but it was a different kind of read for me, and I'm glad I took a risk on it....more

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Jul 05, 2012 Belinda rated it 3 of 5 stars

I did not see that coming! Wow! Absolutely stunned at the ending. Not expecting that at all!

A wonderful take on not just the culinary world, but social status and heirarchy, and the concept of who serves whom. It was quite refreshing to read a novel that hadn't actually been edited of punctuation and grammar - it made it all the more authentic that this 16 year old boy was narrating his story.

I don't think I've ever read a book that has surprised me with such an intriguing twist before. A great...more

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Oct 08, 2012 Youna Angevin-castro rated it 4 of 5 stars

This was a great read...especially if you're a foodie. Be inspired by a young delinquent's seduction by the gastronomic arts. The pace is engaging, and there are plenty of twists and turns to keep you turning the page. A great novel by an Australian writer!

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Aug 01, 2012 Zuzu Burford rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: australian-authors

If you are looking for an original novel, this is it. The story had wondering me where it was going up until the very last pages. The only criticism would be that meals he was able to cook after 7 months training was hard to believe. Never the less an exceptional book for another Aussie author.

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Jul 25, 2012 Louisa rated it 5 of 5 stars

I thought this was excellent and am so glad I read it. It's pretty different to what I normally read but I loved the narrator's "voice". The ending, which is quite disturbing, is one of the main things that will make the book memorable for me.

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May 09, 2013 Jane Walker rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

Very odd. The lack of punctuation is, I suppose, meant to replicate the way Zac would write, but the spelling is all correct, so that doesn't quite work. Disturbing.

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