"A Different Kind of Reality": Monica Ali's In the Kitchen As Global Gothic

Abstract

Engaging with narrative motifs of death, ghostliness and a variety of underground activities, this article reads contemporary British author Monica Ali’s In the Kitchen (2009) as a literary example of the global Gothic.  The purpose of this approach is to arrive at a better comprehension of the social, economic, and geographical contexts from which the story emerges and which impact, as it is argued in the second half of the essay, the main character Gabriel’s emotional and ethical responses to the exploitative, criminal practices he recognizes to underpin, in their (metaphorically, and sometimes physically) subterranean operations, Western consumerism. To this end, the essay first reflects on the rather mixed critical reception of Ali’s novel and claims that much of the negative criticism about excessiveness and incoherence is in fact highlighting the novelist’s interest in the elusive, hard-to-follow structures of global commerce. Afterwards, it situates the work in relation to the contemporary literary Gothic and related conversations about the global, the postcolonial and the transnational. The ensuing analysis of the novel itself is especially informed by the insights of Jacques Derrida, Giorgio Agamben and Zygmunt Bauman.