REVIEW: Ms. Mebel Goes Back to the Chopping Block by Jesse Q Sutanto
A nearly divorced trophy wife enrolls in culinary school to win back her husband, only to find a fresh start in the unlikeliest of places in this new novel from the USA Today bestselling author of Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers.
Retirement should mean long-awaited trips to the sapphire waters of Santorini or careening down a sand dune in Dubai. For sixty-three-year-old Mebel, retirement means her husband of more than forty years announcing that he’s leaving her for their private chef. Mebel isn’t sure who’s the bigger loss.
Not to worry, Mebel has the perfect plan: she’s going to win back her husband. No one knows what he needs better than her—after all, she’s been anticipating his needs their whole marriage. And if he wants a wife who can cook (why else would he leave her for a chef?), she will simply go to cooking school. And where better to learn to cook for your husband than France, the most romantic country in the world?
However, Mebel quickly learns that she has mistakenly enrolled in a culinary school not in glamorous Paris but rather in England—and in some small village outside of Oxford no less. Despite the less-than-warm welcome from her much younger classmates, Mebel manages to befriend Gemma, the breakout star of the program. And this unlikely friendship starts to show Mebel that maybe there’s more to her than being the perfect trophy wife…
CW/TW – sexual harassment
Dear Ms. Sutanto,
I get “Mary Tyler Moore” vibes but Vera Wong fans note you will not get a Vera character here. Why MTM? Because Mebel goes out on her own and everyone she meets seems to fall for her in some way either romantically or through friendship. Also, several review sites list “mystery” and “thriller” as tags for this book but there’s not really either one here.
Mebel has been raised to be what she is and that is the perfect trophy wife. I can’t blame her for her thoughts and actions or what has been important to her because that’s all she’s known and how her culture has framed her. When Henk drops his bombshell, Mebel is faced with Social Ruin among her peers. Divorce? Gasp! The horror. Not only will Mebel lose her marriage and financial perks but she will be ostracized by the other wives. Mebel’s initially half-assed plan to learn to cook and win Henk back isn’t as silly as it first sounds.
So Mebel goes back to school – after a detour to Paris. Cowley isn’t Paris or London or NYC or Dubai or Singapore. No, not these glamorous cities by a long shot. And Mebel’s designer chef’s outfit raises the eyebrows of the class. Mebel’s initial effort at fitting in with the confident students goes sideways before she goes “Chindo mother” on the one who tries to talk down to her. Well, Mebel is just trying to correct his atrocious manners towards his elder. But eventually Mebel begins to fit in with her younger classmates, allows them to call her by her first name, and even relishes her new nickname.
The story is going along, hitting its marks, everything a bit easy, smooth, and straightforward – very linear. Mebel’s cooking skills and determination improve, Mebel and two female students exchange makeup, and Mebel’s designer wardrobe gets tried on and loaned out. Mebel comforts several of her classmates with her Chindo motherly wisdom. It’s nice but I was a bit bored actually as I wanted more spice from Mebel.
Then, certain things hit me. One that Mebel – despite loving her son, DIL, and grands – has not contacted them once or if she has it’s not mentioned. At all. Then one of Mebel’s young school friends suddenly drops out. Just poof, gone. When Mebel tracks her down, she says she has anxiety and it got to be too much for her. Except this is never even hinted at until then. I’m thinking, what? Then the family arrives from Jakarta with the news that I expected and Mebel goes all “I am woman, hear me roar” plus also making sure that her DIL stays to listen to Mebel go off on the (selfish) men in her family before she extracts a promise from her DIL to raise her daughters differently. Okay, yeah this is good and I enjoy watching Mebel’s shiny spine of steel, that you can see from the space station, grow.
So the final quarter of the story feels very different from the first part. We snap from a fairly run of the mill “character who finds herself” as well as finds a “found family” to “piss off family members who’ve been holding me down” with an added dash of #MeToo revenge.
In the end, the book is too predictable. I saw most of the beats coming. There are just no major surprises. Mebel starts out as a cliche of a filthy rich Asian trophy wife who buys out designer shops and doesn’t have a thought of her own in her head. But then she morphs into another cliche but this time of the plucky older woman who learns her strengths and self worth and discovers she loves being independent. All in a little more than two months and at the age of sixty-three.
Even when Mebel was at her inane, spendthrift worst and demanding respect she hadn’t earned just because of her age (and yes, it’s spelled out that this is Chindo culture), I was still amused by her. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed watching her flex her mind, decide what she wants, tell her male relations to FO, and help her classmates. But it is all just too predictable. The feeling is more YA and maybe this is supposed to be Mebel finally moving into adulting albeit in her sixties. But this is more of an amuse bouche rather than a main course. C
~Jayne
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