Book Description 

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…

My Review 

I loved reading Sutanto’s Aunties books as well as her Vera Wong series, so I was very excited about the opportunity to read this book. As the narrative begins, protagonist Mebel receives the shock of her life when she learns that her husband is leaving her for their chef. So she does what any reasonable person would do: hatches a plan to fly across the world and go to culinary school to win him back.  

Mebel is so utterly delightful, and it was such a pleasure to see her grow over the course of the novel. She begins as very single-minded and set in her ways, convinced that she is right about everything. Her stubbornness is one of the keys to her success, but she does learn the value of cooperation. 

While many people go to culinary school because they enjoy cooking, Mebel has never cooked before because she has always had servants. Initially, she doesn’t even understand why she has to learn knife skills because she assumes the “helpers” will do that for her. In a similar vein, she has always been the Queen Bee of her Chinese-Indo society, so finding herself at the bottom of the social rung as a first year culinary student is quite an adjustment. 

Sutanto’s books usually feature lavish descriptions of food and this book about culinary school is no exception. Don’t read this book on an empty stomach! 

I would absolutely recommend Ms. Mebel Goes Back to the Chopping Block. It is funny and heartwarming and Mebel is such a memorable character. This book would make such a fun limited series on a streaming service. I will be looking forward to Sutanto’s next book, fervently hoping that we might one day see a mashup where Mebel, Very Wong, and the Aunties meet in the same book. 

I received a digital ARC of this book from Berkley/NetGalley.