≡ PDF The Kitchens of Canton Isham Cook 9780998413358 Books

The Kitchens of Canton Isham Cook 9780998413358 Books

Download As PDF : The Kitchens of Canton Isham Cook 9780998413358 Books

The Kitchens of Canton Isham Cook 9780998413358 Books

Isham Cook’s new novel, The Kitchens of Canton, is a page-turner. A movie waiting to be made. The hero, Jeff Malmquist, finds himself in the USA of the year 2060, and then of the year 2115, when the US Government has been replaced by Chinese authority and where there exists a replica of ancient Rome staffed by Italian slaves. Malmquist’s quest to return to his own time provides the narrative energy. Confronted with the constant onrush of events, messages and situations, obliged to read them, react to them, or escape them, Malmquist is like a video game character… and, like a video game character, he has no history and no emotions to speak of.
Personally, I found the political “conceit” of the work fascinating: in this future landscape, the USA has been demoted to the status of a mere administrative region of China and the Russians are involved in bustling criminal activity on the internet. Resonance, resonance! As one of the characters says of the USA, “The whole country lost it, became psychologically convulsed in a collective paranoid spasm and imploded”.
Dialogue occurs in several languages: Chinese (transcribed as pinyin), Italian, Latin or Cantonese (similarly transcribed). Personally, I was ok reading the first two, needed a dictionary for much of the Latin, and was at sea in the Cantonese. But this did not matter, and it is part of the point: the reality which Malmquist has to navigate is multiform and profuse; it cannot be mastered, controlled or fully understood, one simply has to do one’s rational best amongst the avalanche of “signs” that keep crowding into view.
The language of the novel is taut and events move quickly. The dialogue is occasionally turgid but Cook has an ear for the grammatical patterns of different speakers as well as an eye for spectacle. Given that the novel has many ingredients that fit the formula for modern cinematic success – sex, guns, drugs, time travel, even magic tunics and a hidden apartment complete with secret doors and naked slaves – I fully expect some studio to scoop up the film rights.
I found the novel to be strong on plot, “conceit” and setting, but weak on character. Gunther, Danny, Zhang and Delilah all had personality, but I had trouble distinguishing between Attica, Syria, Giulia, Paaksi and Ray.
But the main problem is Malmquist himself. Why does he want to return to the 2015 Chicago from which he was plucked? Fear? Sure. Instinct for self-preservation? Of course. Desire to solve a logical, semiotic puzzle? To a certain extent. But what I found bizarre was the fact that Malmquist has no emotional motive to return to the 2015 Chicago from which he was plucked – no family to go back to, no lover, no dog, cat or goldfish, no parents, no favourite landscape, virtually no memories, only a job.
In his “real life” back in 2015 Chicago, Malmquist is a teacher of semiotics, the science of signs, an appropriate profession for a “transmitter/receiver” with no real emotions, awash in a sea of signs that continually threaten to overwhelm him. A semiotician on the run, he is swept along by the maelstrom of events, anxiously trying to decipher them even as he pauses for sex and food.
Readers are swept along with him. Readers who can enjoy the story on the level of a video game, with added erotica, will be satisfied. Readers who seek some kind of emotional return may be disappointed. Malmquist’s relationships with the other characters are essentially transactional, sex and information being the key currencies. To my mind, he has no inner life, and undergoes no growth.
That said, the climax of the novel is intriguing. I won’t spoil the pleasure for readers except to say that Malmquist is finally immobilized. His frenetic video-game-style activity comes to a halt and he is offered the chance of a certain kind of knowledge.
A film for our times.


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The Kitchens of Canton Isham Cook 9780998413358 Books Reviews

Imagine living in a time and place where consensual sex wasn’t a sin and was as natural as breathing versus another time and place when it’s sporting, legal and acceptable to hate, hunt down and shoot alleged sexual perverts. The key word in the previous sentence is “alleged”.
This is not an easy book to review without giving away the surprises in store for readers with open minds that are not turned off by casual sex. In fact, the sex scenes are so casual in this satirical novel, they are as natural as breathing or eating.

In this story, there’s time travel made possible to the past or the future while wearing a magic tunic that comes with changing phrases appearing on the fabric that often expresses what sounds like nonsense.

There are characters that speak no English and all their dialogue is printed in the language they speak, be it Latin or Cantonese. At first I was tempted to use an online translator to find out what these characters were saying but decided to skip that and kept reading only the English prtions. I quickly discovered that I still enjoyed the author’s humorous wit.

In one of the times and places, changing legislation has turned so many Americans into convicted criminals on only heresy and no actual evidence that there aren’t enough prisons to house them so a city is turned into a prison exclusively to house all the alleged child molesters.

And eventually, in this story, China intervenes to save the United States from its own insanity, and maybe even the world from this American madness that is painfully too true. For instance, today the U.S. locks up more people in prisons than any country on the planet. Prison rates in the U.S. are already the world's highest, at 724 people per 100,000. In Russia the rate is 581. In the U.K. at 145 per 100,000 that imprisonment rate of about the word’s midpoint.
This is one of those difficult books that keep you thinking on the subject long after you’ve gone through all its pages. At least this is what happened to me. “The Kitchens of Canton” is not an easy book to follow, as it jumps from one scenery to another, from one action to the next and even from one language to another.

We have our main character Jeff Malmquist who is lost in time and space. Somehow he is sent to different future scenarios, in a world wither ruled by China or Ancient Rome. He is trying to understand how he got there, why and what is happening? And I think that’s the most important question this book is raising. What is happening with us as humans, what is happening with our society. I see it as a raised flag towards what we see around us, the amount of indecency flowing around and most importantly, the lack of coherence.

The different languages used in the book may be confusing to us, as well as to our main character. We get to experience with him the puzzlement and the disturbing feeling caused by all the events. The sexual content is on the highest level. The intimate act is lacking emotion now. It is simply something that must be performed for the happiness of our masters. Huh, ain’t that funny? (I apologize!)

Isham Cook’s story is not one to be taken lightly. Society needs to shift its course towards the true values. We need to be focused on the things and subjects that really matter. Or else we become vain, dump and mere slaves of our own misery. I liked the approach, I liked how it was put into pages – 4 out of 5 stars.
Isham Cook’s new novel, The Kitchens of Canton, is a page-turner. A movie waiting to be made. The hero, Jeff Malmquist, finds himself in the USA of the year 2060, and then of the year 2115, when the US Government has been replaced by Chinese authority and where there exists a replica of ancient Rome staffed by Italian slaves. Malmquist’s quest to return to his own time provides the narrative energy. Confronted with the constant onrush of events, messages and situations, obliged to read them, react to them, or escape them, Malmquist is like a video game character… and, like a video game character, he has no history and no emotions to speak of.
Personally, I found the political “conceit” of the work fascinating in this future landscape, the USA has been demoted to the status of a mere administrative region of China and the Russians are involved in bustling criminal activity on the internet. Resonance, resonance! As one of the characters says of the USA, “The whole country lost it, became psychologically convulsed in a collective paranoid spasm and imploded”.
Dialogue occurs in several languages Chinese (transcribed as pinyin), Italian, Latin or Cantonese (similarly transcribed). Personally, I was ok reading the first two, needed a dictionary for much of the Latin, and was at sea in the Cantonese. But this did not matter, and it is part of the point the reality which Malmquist has to navigate is multiform and profuse; it cannot be mastered, controlled or fully understood, one simply has to do one’s rational best amongst the avalanche of “signs” that keep crowding into view.
The language of the novel is taut and events move quickly. The dialogue is occasionally turgid but Cook has an ear for the grammatical patterns of different speakers as well as an eye for spectacle. Given that the novel has many ingredients that fit the formula for modern cinematic success – sex, guns, drugs, time travel, even magic tunics and a hidden apartment complete with secret doors and naked slaves – I fully expect some studio to scoop up the film rights.
I found the novel to be strong on plot, “conceit” and setting, but weak on character. Gunther, Danny, Zhang and Delilah all had personality, but I had trouble distinguishing between Attica, Syria, Giulia, Paaksi and Ray.
But the main problem is Malmquist himself. Why does he want to return to the 2015 Chicago from which he was plucked? Fear? Sure. Instinct for self-preservation? Of course. Desire to solve a logical, semiotic puzzle? To a certain extent. But what I found bizarre was the fact that Malmquist has no emotional motive to return to the 2015 Chicago from which he was plucked – no family to go back to, no lover, no dog, cat or goldfish, no parents, no favourite landscape, virtually no memories, only a job.
In his “real life” back in 2015 Chicago, Malmquist is a teacher of semiotics, the science of signs, an appropriate profession for a “transmitter/receiver” with no real emotions, awash in a sea of signs that continually threaten to overwhelm him. A semiotician on the run, he is swept along by the maelstrom of events, anxiously trying to decipher them even as he pauses for sex and food.
Readers are swept along with him. Readers who can enjoy the story on the level of a video game, with added erotica, will be satisfied. Readers who seek some kind of emotional return may be disappointed. Malmquist’s relationships with the other characters are essentially transactional, sex and information being the key currencies. To my mind, he has no inner life, and undergoes no growth.
That said, the climax of the novel is intriguing. I won’t spoil the pleasure for readers except to say that Malmquist is finally immobilized. His frenetic video-game-style activity comes to a halt and he is offered the chance of a certain kind of knowledge.
A film for our times.