Himmler’s Cook
Celebrated chef and restaurateur, Rose, begins this memoir of her life, and the 20th century, with a letter of informing her of a death, yet we do not find out why this affects her until near the novel’s end. For Rose is a tricky and teasing narrator, juxtaposing a jokey, faux-naïve voice with a grim tale of the century’s genocides, beginning with Armenia and ending in the excesses of the Cultural Revolution.
Although written in a deceptively simple and direct style, very well-rendered in Anthea Bell’s translation, this is a complex novel, a combination of personal memoir and historical narrative in which both Rose and the 20th century itself vie for centre stage. Orphaned by the Armenian genocide, Rose makes her way via Istanbul to Marseilles under the protection of a series of lovers, with whom her relationships set a pattern. She makes it clear she’s with them for the sake of her survival, yet her astute erotic sensibility also enables her to sympathise with them. This pattern of exploitation through pandering to men’s appetites, for food as well as sex, is repeated throughout Rose’s life, as her fame as a chef grows and she uses her power over men to wreak revenge on those responsible for the tragedies of her life.
Rose’s vengeances are apposite and funny as well as brutal and give the novel its mood of black humour. The directness with which she writes about sex and death is both shocking and hilarious, yet where cooking, reading and real love are concerned, she is a serious and insightful narrator.
A novel whose contrasts do not always sit easily together, but a compelling read nonetheless.
