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Favorable
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Booklist Mark Knoblauch
Welsh has a remarkable gift for setting and for dialogue, as long as the reader can stomach ubiquitous, unrelenting repetition of vulgarities. [Jul 2006]
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Favorable
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Entertainment Weekly Gilbert Cruz
The Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs is many things -- a family saga, a revenge fantasy, a Twilight Zone-esque parable, and, most importantly, a very fun read.
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Favorable
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Kirkus Reviews
Welsh's best since his spectacular debut novel Trainspotting. [1 Jun 2006]
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Favorable
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Library Journal
The result will arouse the adrenaline of some readers but will leave die-hard Welsh fans hungry. [1 Jun 2006, p.114]
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Favorable
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Publishers Weekly
Welsh's expansive storytelling and archly imaginative humor now suggest a more aggro John Irving. [8 May 2006]
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Favorable
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Village Voice Theo Schell-Lambert
The novel doesn't skirt the unlikely jam of fairy tale magic and Leith Walk argot.
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Favorable
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Daily Telegraph Jane Shilling
Even as he build his crescendo of horror and regret, Welsh is unable to resist a series of camp nods to the gallery.
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Favorable
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The Guardian James Lasdun
The Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs may not be his best novel (parts of it are not very good at all), but it shares the same roiling chorus of hard men, wee hoors, old jakeys and biddies as its predecessors, builds with the same logic of escalating perversity, and leaves one with the same reeling sensation of having got quite a bit more than one's money's worth.
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Favorable
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The Independent Deborah Orr
The most touching and beautiful of his writings.
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Favorable
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Sydney Morning Herald Howard Hilton
This novel is engrossing, rewarding and fun. It is shot through with sardonic wit and a wonderfully mordant sense of humour.
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Mixed
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The Globe And Mail [Toronto] Eric McCormack
I don't want to give anything away, but their relationship (shades of Jekyll and Hyde) may seem to some readers a little farfetched, though Welsh makes a valiant effort.
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Mixed
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The Observer Alex Clark
Much of the writing seems filled in, clunky and stilted.
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Mixed
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Daily Telegraph James Walton
Of course, there's nothing wrong with a novel being open to several interpretations. In this case, though, they seem the result not of deft and deliberate ambiguity, but of authorial confusion.... Yet, for all its faults, The Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs does rattle along with impressive energy - and, as hopelessly messy novels go, has more good bits than most.
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Mixed
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Los Angeles Times James Marcus
Alas, the author complicates things with a mess of subplots. [6 Aug 2006]
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Unfavorable
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The Independent David Mattin
Time and again Welsh finds himself caught between narrative realism and the magical parable that he wants to tell.
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Terrible
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The New York Times Book Review Robert Macfarlane
Although it fails at every imaginable level -- metaphysical, ethical, technical, thematic -- it is at the stylistic level, the level of the sentence, that Welsh’s novel is most wanting.
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