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If I described this novel in a single word, it would be *sensual*. The author knows food, and especially its potential for seduction.

The main character is a line chef who pads her resumé when a great opportunity arises for her to work at a restaurant seemingly at the top of the world, in the rareified air.

Her employer is a nouveau riche ultrawealthy Italian man with a chip on his shoulder, and a sinister need to exert power over others. He has discovered that money doesn't buy class or respect, but he keeps trying anyway. His idea of haute cuisine is something along the lines of: turtle soup, wedge salad, Escargot in puff pastry, Steak Diane, and Salmon Oscar with chocolate mousse for dessert, all the hip foods of many years ago. His daughter is much more refined, but also haughty at times.

The employer has anticipated every global disaster, and invested in the right things, at the right time. It's uncanny, and a little fishy, like getting a straight flush three times in a row.

The employer has also stockpiled every culinary item that he was prescient enough to know would be impossible to find at some point. It's such an astronomical gastronomical hoard, it needs its own storage level to itself, at the bottom of a long staircase. The main character feels like Persephone, going down to the Underworld, and frankly the whole place has a dangerous vibe. You can tell that there are secrets being kept from her. And have long deep dark staircases ever lead to anything good in fiction?

Of course, it is a very small leap to go from hoarding all of Earth's most precious resources, to playing God. This plot point is hardly a surprise, but it is also well presented, with just the right amount of detail.

The employer and his daughter feed on the insecurities of their staff, making them jump through hoops and participate in ridiculous games. Craftily, they combine compliments with challenges. It's a heady mix, leaving the main character forever second guessing where she stands.

Still, our unnamed narrator/protagonist/chef knows the ecstatic appreciation of perpendicular flavors. It's no small power she wields, as she reminisces to herself:

𝘐 𝘩𝘢𝘥 𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘱𝘰𝘸𝘦𝘳𝘧𝘶𝘭 𝘣𝘺 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘪𝘳 𝘵𝘰𝘯𝘨𝘶𝘦𝘴.

Her employer, however, rather than appearing warm, indulgent, and effusive toward his guests, comes off as chilled, even acerbic. The chef begins to wonder if her employer really wants acceptance from the old money set, or if he is disgusted by their easy wanton excesses. Those who feel inferior to others tend to hate, mistrust, and fear everyone else. It can make them seem hostile when they don't speak, and boorish and unpolished when they do. As incredibly cringey as the employer comes across to his guests, he believes he has some power over them, and surprisingly, after they push back at his ill-mannered brashness, they succumb to his perhaps ill-conceived leadership, simply led by their fear of the unwashed masses he seems to be holding back from touching them, on this well-guarded patch of safe harbor.

The guests' greed for the rare, and not just to consume it, but to inhabit it, overcomes their initial privileged, conspicuous pickiness and their usual self-aggrandizing, prickly natures. There will always be those who prize whatever others cannot have, regardless if they even want it. The emphasis on extravagant indulgences during the worst apocrypha the world had ever known, strikes our narrator as so absurd as to be darkly comical. It's like being the personal chef for Dr. Moreau while the Earth turns to ash. But, she can play this two-tiered role for the benefits, whether it makes her hate herself later or not.

At this stage of the story, it's difficult to know who is really in charge: the employer or his smart, savvy daughter. This is made more difficult by the fact that they both think that they are in charge and that the other plays a supporting role. Our narrator agrees to play a part selected for her, not just because she has no other good options, but also because it appeals to her pride. She already knows that this is not the moral high road.

A huge contributor to our discomfort about the arrangement made between our Asian American narrator and her employer is that he seems to see her as a subservient stereotype, more of a stand-in, a role to play, than a person. It's clear that our protagonist has known more than her share of disrespect over the years, so she almost expects this.

As unlikable as the employer is, he knows how to sell to the wealthy: rarity. This is like a very upscale version of a timeshare condo pitch, except it's the last vacation condo in the world, and you get to spend one hour there before it will disappear into the sea. That's the kind of rare experience he's selling and that some people cannot resist:

𝘏𝘦 𝘴𝘦𝘳𝘷𝘦𝘥 𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘴𝘶𝘤𝘤𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘢𝘭𝘰𝘯𝘨𝘴𝘪𝘥𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘭𝘥'𝘴 𝘥𝘦𝘤𝘢𝘺, 𝘢𝘯 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘰𝘹𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘧𝘭𝘢𝘷𝘰𝘳 𝘴𝘸𝘦𝘦𝘵 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘧𝘦𝘢𝘳 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘳𝘰𝘵𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘣𝘺 𝘱𝘳𝘪𝘥𝘦.

Psychological manipulation is inherent in any scheme to get investors on board. The people have to not only agree to invest, but to actually thank you for the rare opportunity you've given them because they were special enough to be chosen. A seat at the table itself must be seen as a prize.

It's not clear how long they felt their collaboration could last, or how much they hated themselves or disliked each other. But even dislike is a type of relationship. They needed that connection, a kind of mutual justification and possible mutually assured destruction.

There is no shortage of symbolism in this story. The function of the invisible glass eye in the secret room seems to be a stand-in for both conscience and shame, both of which the employer and the chef are sublimating. Our protagonist feels she is becoming less substantial, a smokey outline of herself, vulnerable to complete erasure. She thinks about how her mother saw food as work, and how the chef sees food as joy. Could they ever have learned to understand each other, the standoff of the practical against the pleasurable? It is ironic, then, that part of the role our protagonist/chef/narrator plays is one of purity, of denial of self.

The daughter of the employer has a different crisis of self: to believe in her own grand plan is to believe in herself. It props her up. It's central to her identity. She mistakes realistic prognostication as pessimism.

Sensuality is what cuts through all the noise, the only meaning in a world which has lost all meaning. The author does not disappoint in her melding of the pleasures of both food and sex, how they both can make us feel more alive. Both have a pull and a power greater than our own will. After months of feigning placid piety, the protagonist is ready to seek, and to surrender to, passions of every kind.

Unfortunately, there are other kinds of passions. When political winds change and the 1% are in danger of losing their own continuing privilege, that's when the games get ugliest. This time, manipulation of their biggest investor will require accepting humiliation, a crime of passionate greed. Nothing can be the same after that event, but somehow they all at least feel that they have to move forward. They're in too deep. When the employer holds a ridiculous vanity hunt, the whole charade screams of excess, the hunting call described by our narrator as 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘥 𝘰𝘧 𝘦𝘹𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯.

Out of all the hangers-on at the mountaintop, only one is a voice of sanity, of conscience, of truth. The story exposes the rituals and practices of the super wealthy for their inherent gruesomeness. Our narrator must wonder who we have become. Who decides who survives? Or who is prey, and who is predator? Those are questions for a much different world, one for which we may be headed.