The seedy realities of two so-called dream jobs are uncovered in a couple of new tell-all autobiographies, writes Kerri Jackson.
KEY POINTS:
Chefs can be quite attractive; professional cooking, however, is undoubtedly not. Anybody who fancies themselves as the next Nigella or Jamie must read this latest grim - often revolting - tell-all memoir.
Admittedly perhaps not all chefs start quite as low, even underneath, the ladder as Teri Louise Kelly, but nonetheless reading Sex Knives and Bouillabaisse (Wakefield Press, $39.90) will cure anybody of their delusions of glamour around a career in cooking; also possibly of ever eating out again.
Adding a pinch more curiosity to Kelly's story is that she is transsexual. She began her kitchen career in a hotel in the English seaside town of Brighton, as Luiz, a cocky lad fresh from Borstal.
What follows is predictably rank. Kelly regales the reader with tales of horror knife injuries, liver-twisting alcohol consumption, and sweat (literally) shop working conditions.
The 1970s British hotel kitchen, not renowned as a hotbed of culinary brilliance to begin with, is also a place where hygiene is apparently something that happens to other people. And, while Kelly's horror stories become stale by the end, this is still a compelling account of the sociopathic types who often staff professional kitchens.
Watch out for part two of Kelly's tale, due next year, as it's set almost entirely in New Zealand.
The other tell-all autobiography causing a stir is Thomas Kohnstamm's account of his time as a writer for Lonely Planet, Do Travel Writers Go To Hell? (Allen & Unwin, $35).
The knickers of Lonely Planet and its current writers have predictably been in a twist over Kohnstamm's anecdotes which include reviewing a restaurant as "a pleasant surprise ... and the table service is friendly" having had sex with a waitress on a table. Reading the book it's harder to see what the fuss is about.
It's a good, entertaining read, no question. But like Kelly's book this is best read as a nosy into the sometimes salacious details of the life of someone who earns their living outside the usual nine-to-five office drudgery, rather than as an exposé of Lonely Planet.
Kohnstamm does do a very good job of demystifying and de-glamourising what many see as a dream job, and he's often very funny. What's most entertaining are his accounts of the misfits, drop-outs and plain weirdos who begin to populate his world. As the cover blurb says this is a story for those who think travel guides are travel gospel ... a guide book for how not to use guide books.
Thomas Kohnstamm is a guest at Auckland Writers and Readers Festival, starting May 14.
