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Title: The Hundred-Foot Journey by Richard C. Morais
Details: Copyright 2008, Simon and Schuster
Synopsis (By Way of Back Cover): "Now a major motion picture starring HELEN MIRREN, OM PURI, MANISH DAYAL, AND CHARLOTTE LE BON, the culinary fairytale hailed as “Slumdog Millionaire meets Ratatouille” by The New York Times Book Review-- about a young Indian boy who becomes a three-star chef in Paris.
Born above his grandfather’s modest restaurant in Mumbai, Hassan Haji first experienced life through intoxicating whiffs of spicy fish curry, trips to the local markets, and gourmet outings with his mother. But when tragedy strikes, the Hajis leave India and embark on a journey around the world, eventually opening an Indian restaurant in Lumière, a small town in the French mountains. The family takes the village by storm, provoking the ire of their neighbor- Madame Mallory, the proprietress of an esteemed French relais. Only after waging culinary war with the immigrant family does Madam Mallory finally agree to mentor young Hassan, leading him to Paris and a slew of new adventures. A testament to the inevitability of destiny, this is a fable for the ages: charming, endearing, and compulsively readable."
Why I Wanted to Read It: You may remember my observation that a lot of magical realism fiction often involves food. In searching for more magical realism, I accidentally requested a bunch of books with (purportedly) lots of food mentioning but no magical realism. Oops. This is one of said books.
How I Liked It:
Hey, that would make a great movie! You've probably said it, and even if you haven't, you know someone that has. Whether it's a true life story, alternative history, or just a kooky idea kicking around, nearly everyone if not everyone has an idea for a movie. But here's the thing. An idea for a movie is not and should not be the same as a book. A book is a book, and when books get screen adaptations (be they TV or film), the changes made are sometimes necessary to adapt to a new form of storytelling to the same story. But what of the authors with their eyes on the hopeful screen adaptation instead of the page?
But first! Meet Hassan Haji! Or more accurately, first meet his grandparents, striking out with food service in World War II, adapting recipes to meet hungry soldiers from other lands. From there, we meet his bombastic father and regal mother, whose family restaurant develops with the help of their big extended family. But anti-Muslim sentiment in India leads to an attack on the restaurant that ultimately kills Haji's mother.
In shock and horror, the family ponders what to do and is shocked to discover that family property they own is suddenly valuable. They sell it and become millionaires, with Haji's father vowing to leave the country that killed his wife.
They land in England and culture shock hits hard. Trying to restart their restaurant business is tough. They make their way to France, in a modest little very xenophobic village. Meet Madame Mallory! A culinary institution in the village and facing a reckoning of life and her own shortcomings, she fears she'll never get another Michelin star and her career is finished. What a spectacularly bad time to have an upstart immigrant family start making waves in the village. She visits the restaurant as a courtesy, but is shocked and horrified to find that one of the cooks (Haji) is a genius, and she can tell. Already threatened, the family doesn't help matters any by buying up all of "her" stock from her local suppliers.
She confronts Haji's father, who totally misses the point (and further strains relations), and then goes on a particularly nasty campaign of dirty tricks (including filing noise complaints about the restaurant and using what she knows about the private lives of her suppliers to ensure she'll get dibs and her competitors get nothing). The family retaliates and things come to a head when finally during a physical altercation with Haji's father, Madame Mallory succeeds in accidentally pushing Haji into the flames, the same way his mother died.
But Haji lives and recuperates in the hospital, while Madam Mallory is horrified by what she's done. She tries to visit, but is violently denied by the family and then left to walk the considerable distance home (in winter) by the long-time friend she succeeds in infuriating with her continued selfishness about the situation.
She returns with pastry and sees Haji alone and again he impresses her with his culinary talent, guessing her spices and methods. She offers him a job, an apprenticeship with her restaurant. His family is horrified, but Haji agrees and leaves his family to work with Madam Mallory. He excels and lands a position (with no doubt some string pulling from Madam Mallory) in a Paris restaurant and from there becomes a lauded chef with his own place.
The death of one of his mentors and colleagues hits home and he shakes things up at his restaurant. The book ends as he gets his third Michelin star (one more than his mentor Madam Mallory) and he reflects on his success.
If you're leery, as I was, of what sounded like an immigrant (facing distinctly racist, xenophobic violence)'s story being written by a white person not of that (south Asian) culture, you're quite right to be leery. And we'll get to that. But it's not quite an immigrant's story. I'm not sure quite what this book is supposed to be and the author isn't either. However, unlike me, the author doesn't care.
In the addition I read, published post 2014 movie but with the 2010 (I assume?) afterward, the author makes clear his motivation to write this book was for it to be made into a movie project, and then a movie project to honor a friend of his that had died. Not a book, but a movie particularly:
This book is an homage to the late Ismail Merchant, the talented and irrepressible film producer behind Merchant Ivory Productions, who died unexpectedly in 2005. Ismail and I both loved eating well and banging pots in the kitchen, and one day, as we dined at the Bombay Brasserie in London, I urged Ismail to find a literary property that combined his love of food with his love of filmmaking. I would help him in this endeavor, I promised. Sadly, Ismail died before I finished writing this book, but it is my sincere hope that one day The Hundred-Foot Journey will make it to the screen, a fitting memorial to my late friend. (pg 243)
So my intent was to write a book that would marry Ismail's love of the kitchen with his love of filmmaking. I was trying to make a literary property that ultimately could be developed into a film, which I was secretly hoping he would produce. Sadly, Ismail died before I completed my novel. It is, however, now in active film development in Hollywood. (from an interview with the author at the back of the book)
But the problem is, this isn't so much a book as a jumble of ideas to be finessed by a team of screenwriters. The plot isn't terribly consistent (there's a lot of random happenstance that doesn't suit any kind of story and kind of reads like the author sticking things to a wall) and the characterization is even less so. While we initially get some sort of a feel for Madame Mallory's sense of life passing her by and failure, she slips right into Disney villain mode and becomes a cartoon character.
On a traditional boar hunt with the local culinary community, Madame Mallory is at first shocked to see Haji, then goes out of her way to kill an exceptionally young boar, much to the horror and umbrage of the rest of the hunting party. When demanded to know why she did such a thing, violating the rules of the hunting party,
Mallory took her time to answer. Someone who didn't know our history might even have thought it was innocent, the way she seemed to nonchalantly glance over the hunt master's shoulder to look directly at me for the first time that day, a faint smile tugging the corners of her lips.
"Because, my friend, the young. I find their flesh so tasty to eat. Don't you agree?" (pg 109)
That campy dialog closes the chapter.
But what of Haji, our narrator and ostensible main character? Just who exactly is he? Does he spend time rhapsodizing over food? Is he haunted by techniques, scents, ingredients? Nope! He pretty much spends the book moving the plot from place to place, and there's a scant mention of his perpetual girlfriends and his unfortunate attitude about women in general (we'll get to that) that the book treats as a personality quirk, presumably because he really has no other identifying characteristics. The book pays some lip service to Haji's thoughts about immigrants and being an immigrant, but mostly it's just reportage of the racism and xenophobia of the town (mixed in with some truly unfortunate racial politics, which again I'll get into later).
So what again is the point of this book? The author is willing to try anything, but not willing to do the work to execute those concepts. An immigrant story? Sure. Hero's (hundred-foot) journey? Okay, why not? And how about a completely bizarre subplot that does nothing to the story about a con-artist waiter who is blatantly abusing France's service worker protection laws and who isn't so much a character as a concoction of propaganda from the very wealthy that pour money into stopping worker protection laws? The fact the author has more passion for this Evils of Worker Legal Protections subplot than he does for most of the main action sure doesn't help either.
You could dismiss the author as a bad one, but I don't think that's necessarily true. For one, I haven't read any of his other works, and for two, there are tiny, tiny glimmers of promise buried here and there:
And it was here on these seats that I had my first taste of England: a chilled and soggy egg-salad sandwich wrapped in a triangle of plastic. It is the bread, in particular, that I remember, the way it dissolved on my tongue.
Never before had I experienced anything so determinedly tasteless, wet, and white. (pg 31)
Mallory could not move. Finally, however, she undressed silently in the dark, the stiff girdle peeling off her like an avocado skin. (pg 65)
And then there's groan-worthy stuff like this:
But it was there, in the narrow bed under the dormer window, that Abhidha peeled off her V-neck sweater to give me a good nuzzle in her coconuts, while her hands down below tugged at my belt. (pg 47)
Going to go ahead and offer that unless you're a Rat Pack era comedian delivering a risque punchline perhaps while playing a tropical locale, referring to breasts as "coconuts" is hokey and doesn't give off the casual vibe you may hope it does.
The dialog and characters' voice are all over the place, and we'll get to that, too. Also, for as disparate places as this book depicts, along with their foods, the setting is frustratingly static and doesn't feel as vivid as it should (and given so many other failing factors of this book, a failed setting to highlight the aforementioned hundred-foot journey is a failing far too many).
It's not a surprise that when this book made it to movie form, it was quite different. So different that I can say that without having even seen the movie, just reading the Wikipedia summary. Honestly, the Wikipedia summary of the movie's plot sounds better than the book.
I realized something last year about one of my favorite authors, possibly the most screen-adapted author of multiple works (meaning not just one or two books) in modern times. Stephen King excels the most not at setting, or description, or dialog, or plot, but at concepts, which is a part of why he's so adaptable to the screen. A troubled, bullied girl that can move objects with her mind, a haunted evil car, a evil clown rising from the sewers to capture children, a world where you can stop the JFK assassination over and over again, the fantasy world that you can visit created by an author, all of these have lent themselves to be adapted to the screen (multiple times, in some cases). Yet they were all fully-fleshed out stories in their own right (with varying levels of success) even though King has to know that in at least the past twenty-five years if not longer, absolutely anything he's written is almost guaranteed to get a screen adaptation. For even his stumbles, King always puts the book first and doesn't make the initial product just a stepping stone to the screen and if I have to tell you the book is vastly better for it (even when it's not his best), you haven't been paying attention.
It's always a boon for an author to get a screen version of their work and it's understandable why they would want that to happen. But the reader has to come before the viewing audience, otherwise, what's the point? Reading a book like this, where the author is so focused on the screen adaptation, feels tantamount to reading behind-the-scenes screenwriter's notes, only when you'd do that, it'd be because the movie you already saw was so entertaining you want to learn more about it.
This book isn't a book. It's a movie proposal. And it's a shame that of the two versions of this story, the effort seemed to go to the one onscreen.
Notable:
The author is a white American who according to the author's blurb on the back of the book, was "raised in Switzerland" and "lived most of his life overseas, returning to the United States in 2003." There's been some necessary and important discussion in recent years about writing for marginalized groups to which you do not belong. It's a nuanced, complicated conversation, because we also want to see diverse characters and situations and yes, you can have it both ways. A het/cis author, for example, can write for a Queer character. But a het/cis author writing for a Queer character in a story where the primary focus is about the Queer character being Queer (coming out, facing bigotry, et cetera) is almost always best left to someone who has actually experienced that. That way, the stories not only retain authenticity, the authors are diverse as well.
So given that (purportedly, anyway) a big theme of this book is the main character breaking from his culture and facing bigotry and prejudice, isn't it kind of wrong that a white author is tackling this? If you're willing to suspend some judgement because hey, this was written fourteen years ago and maybe it's debatable that this author should've told this story, but what if the story is good, let me assure you it's pretty bad.
For one, Haji's father, a major character in the book, is absolutely disgusting. He has no table manners (or social nicety), farts and belches constantly (his eating is a horrific spectacle that's described in more vivid detail than most of the foods in the book), and his personal grooming involves making first his wife, then his children, tend to the disgusting skin condition on his back. He (spoilers!) dies while having a heart attack while choking on some food he's eating too quickly.
But okay! While those are stereotypes about South Asian people (the dirty barbarian), maybe the father is a one-off? While he's definitely the grossest, even Haji's very young sister is treated as disgusting by Madame Mallory when she goes to politely pat the girl's head, only to realize that her hair is oily with a family tincture and has to wipe her hand off on a napkin.
In India, Haji also witnesses children defecating right in the street, but I can't say that wasn't meant to be more of a statement about the stark class distinctions.
But most notably is the fact that all of Haji's family (including him, when he's speaking to them) talk in strange broken English. There's a way to depict in English that a character is speaking a foreign language, and this author depicts it just fine with French. It's not ever said what language Haji and his family are speaking to one another, as India has many languages and so does Mumbai, the area where they're from in India. The word "yaar" is used frequently, so I'm assuming Hindi is meant to be the language, although "yaar" is apparently common in Indian English. So-- wait. Are they meant to be speaking English? If English is their first language, why do they speak it so badly? What's more, Haji will go from speaking unflawed English with others (presumably this is French) into this weird broken, accented English with his family. It's not even terribly consistent, as you'll see. Trying to give the benefit of the doubt, is the author suggesting they're speaking Indian English? But the flaws in the family's speech doesn't point to Indian English, they point to people for whom English isn't a first language.
"That girl is in my school. See her in the playground."
Papa flung his finished corncob into the bushes and wiped his face with a handkerchief.
"Is that so?" he said. "She nice?"
"No. She think she spicy hot." (pg 13)
"Hassan," he'd say, tugging at his big toe. "You still too small. Tell Big Abbas to feed you more fish. Got nice tuna here from Goa, man."
"That no decent fish, man. That cat food."(pg 19)
"What? What you crying for? We are better off going back to London. They won't make any room for us here. I was foolish to think they would. Look at you. Look what my pighead has done to you--" (pg 116)
"You are utterly mad. No. Worse. You are sick. Who you tink you are?" (pg 125)
"Who dat for? Who dat for?" (pg 131)
"You are looking so thin. I tink dat woman starve you." (pg 137)
"No? Hmm. Not very impressive. Perhaps she not as good as we tink." (pg 138)
"Oh, so proud. Oh, I wish Mummy and Papa were here. I tink I might cry." (pg 236)
In addition to the speech, Madame Mallory in attempting to convince Haji's family to let him work for her, sits and waits on a chair in the family's courtyard, going on a hunger strike. This enrages Haji's father for multiple reasons, including
The thing that galled him was the idea that Mallory was using passive resistance to get what she wanted. Of course, this was the very same method with which Gandhi had created modern India, and it was intolerable, so infuriating, that she would use the same methods against us. (pg 130)
I debated adding this bit, but really, if you can name any one person from India, who is the most common? Probably Gandi.
Lastly, and most tellingly that this is from a white author is Haji's romance with Margaret, another employee of Madame Mallory's. When on an errand, they split up in a shop and he overhears a nasty conversation.
It was when I was directly on the other side of the stack containing the chocolates and biscuits that I heard male voice asking what had happened to her "nègre blanc," followed by all the other men laughing. I remember pausing-- listening intently-- but I never heard Margaret challenge the remark. She just ignored it, pretended it never happened, and then joined their laughter as they continued with their provincial palaver and teasing on some other subject. And there was a moment of disappointment, I must confess, when I held my breath and waited for her response, but I also knew Margaret was anything but a racist, so I pushed on and paid the bill and she joined me shortly thereafter. (pg 156)
Aw! They literally called him the n-word which doesn't even garner a reaction from her, even horror and anger that it's clear she's repressing for the sake of social propriety or even her own safety. But it's okay! He knows she's "anything but a racist", even as she's going along with racism. And Haji knows it's only "teasing" and just feels "a moment of disappointment"!
Sigh.
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In what I'm assuming is meant to be character development, Haji uses the death of his mother to have all sorts of troublesome ideas about women. From lusting after his teenage cousin when he meets her (they're around the same age, so he's also a teenager) to pursuing a much-older woman, he never matures and given that the book is in his voice, his continued thoughts about women too frequently skew into male author/male gaze territory and it's insufferable, particularly since we're given so little else about the main character.
Not to mention toxic masculinity. On a date as a teenager, Haji wants to see a Bruce Willis movie "involving an unusually large number of helicopter chases and exploding office buildings" but his date wants to see a play about "three homosexuals" (not gay people, "homosexuals") imprisoned in Siberia during the Soviet era. The play shockingly moves him ("It wasn't really about homosexuals" but also "about the majesty of their destiny to be homos, and that was a force of its own and could not be denied") and he feels guilty for being emotional, and surprised at the effect it has on his date.
I was sullen, snappish, totally embarrassed for having blubbered like a girl during this strange play. But women-- this I will never understand-- they are touched by the oddest things, and Abhidha was on her cell phone, ringing a chum, and the next thing I knew she was shoving me into the back of a black taxi, and we were on our way to her friend's flat in Maida Vale [to have sex]. (pg 46 and 47)
This, then, became my lifelong pattern with women: as soon as things between us were on the verge of becoming close, I withdrew. Difficult to admit, but by sister Mehtab-- who oversees the restaurant's accounts and maintains my flat- is really the only woman I have ever maintained a relationship with over time. And she insists my emotional clock stopped, that part to do with women, when Mummy died.
Perhaps. But remember this, too: freed from the emotional demands of wife and children, I was able to spend my life in the swarm embrace of the kitchen. (pgs 49 and 50)
Likewise, the book veers into cartoonish misogyny (and ageism) about Madame Mallory. Youth is kindness, age is cruelty:
And I remember how the light of the fire suddenly seemed to smooth her skin in a kind of illusory face-lift, and how, for a brief moment, I caught a glimpse of Madame Mallory as she might have been- light of heart, hopeful, butter-skinned. But in that tremulous, insecure light, I also saw how she could so easily go the other way, and a moment later, she did. For the fire's flicker suddenly cast shadows over her, horribly exaggerating the jowls of her face, a slashing and scarring across the eyes, and I saw the cruelty that lurked there, too, all tightly bound under that feather Tyrolean hat. (pgs 106 and 107)
As a fully fledged adult, Haji is no better:
I confessed to Paul I had indeed had a memorable meal at Maison Dada, a few years ago, with my then-girlfriend, the thick-thighed Marie, who smelled of mushrooms.(pg 176)
Really? That's the only notable thing about your girlfriend? He describes other women with whom he dallies in similar terms, although Marie bears the brunt of a lot.
When I asked Marie what she thought of the dinner, she replied, "Zinzin"-- Parisian street slang for "Crazy"-- and I must confess my inarticulate shopgirl had rather accurately summed up our dining experience, even before that notorious womanizer manhandled her under the table.(pg 177)
I didn't think it could get worse, but his girlfriend ("inarticulate shopgirl") is subjected to the sexual harassment of a famous chef who grabs her at dinner.
Perhaps it was this boyish subservience on my part that in some way emboldened him, for the entire time he and I talked shop, Chef Mafitte had his hand in Marie's lap under the table, where she was heroically fighting off his inappropriate gropings.
When Mafitte finally left our table, Marie said, in her blunt Parisian way, that the great chef was nothing but a chaud lapin, which sounds rather endearing but in actual fact meant she thought he was a dangerous sex maniac. Later I learned Mafitte's voracious appetite extended to all ages and species of viande.(pg 208 and 209)
For those unaware "viande" means "meat". Yikes. If this book is, as no less than the late Anthony Boudain attested, a truly accurate portrayal of "the world of cooking", it's not hard to see why Mario Batali lasted as long as he did.
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Madame Mallory is one character supposedly that has a redemption, but she doesn't redeem herself very far and her bigotry and xenophobia have violent results even before she almost kills her competition.
"Aren't you the mayor of this town? Aren't you meant to preserve our way of life? You shouldn't be encouraging these foreigners. It's a disgrace. Why are you eating [at their restaurant]?"
"Because, Gertrude, the food is excellent. A nice change."
My heavens. Like he'd hit her. Madame Mallory let out a horrified squawk, and then turned abruptly, fleeing back to the safety of Le Saule Pleureur, (pg 100)
"Horrified squawk"?
Mallory's strategy of intimidation was starting to pay off. The heavy traffic that so cheered us on opening night fell off quite rapidly, and by the end of the week we were lucky to fill five tables. Mukhtar was beaten by bullies at the local school and chased down the town's side streets to the taunts of "Curry-head, curry-head, curry-head." (pg 105)
Haji's father during the altercation with Madame Mallory that lands Haji in the hospital calls her uncivilized and a barbarian for her tactics. She doesn't take it well.
Madame Mallory had never before been called "uncivilized." Quite the contrary, she was, in most circles, considered the very essence of refined French culture. So to be called a barbarian, and by this Indian, to boot, was just too much for her and she smashed Papa on the chest with her fist. (pg 113)
Physical blows now and Haji's father bellows at her to get out of his house.
"Non," Mallory yelled back. "You get out. Get out of my country, you... you dirty foreigner." (pg 114)
"Listen, you, listen to what I'm saying. This is a chance for your son to become a truly great French chef, a man of taste, a proper artist, not just some curry cook working in an Indian bistro." (pg 126)
"A bit heavy-handed with the juniper berries, I would say. you only need three or four to feel their presence. Otherwise, the taste, it's too German." (pg 153)
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And so, next day, Auntie and Mehtab helped me pack my bag and I crossed the street. A lot of emotion went into that hundred-foot journey, cardboard suitcase in hand, from one side of Lumière's boulevard to the other. (pg 133)
And we have our title.
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Immigrants, by instinct, we like to keep our heads down. Not make waves. (pg 196)
Except that's not entirely true since we've seen Haji actively court fame and acclaim in Paris.
Final Grade: D-
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