Monica Ali’s main themes are already coming into focus. “In the Kitchen,” like her wildly successful first novel, “Brick Lane,” takes on multicultural, postcolonial Britain. What does it look and sound like? Who gets included? What are its prospects?

This novel also demonstrates some of the strengths of her first work. There is much pleasure to be had in the lovingly crafted characters, the vivid scenes and the generously comic eye that lurks even in a novel detailing great human tragedy.

However, these many strengths do not constitute a thoroughly engaging whole, largely because of a lack of narrative drive. Perhaps in an attempt to mirror Gabe's uncertainty and vacillation, the story lurches erratically and stalls repeatedly.

One of the recurring ideas in the novel is the nature of choice in life - the degree to which one can shape one's own destiny. But however shapeless real life may be, readers can be unforgiving of novels with a real-life plot structure and, as a literary conceit, it is old news.

The thematic development is also clunky, with many of the characters' conversations on capital-T themes seeming tacked-on and didactic.

Ali furnishes Gabe's kitchen with the intellectual Nikolai, a refugee doctor forced to become a junior chef, and his conversations with the increasingly manic Gabe recall the Socratic discussion of a philosophy tutorial.

Towards the end, the plot finally gathers momentum, indicating that some vigorous pruning would have released the story and made for a more absorbing novel.

As it is, too many readers will be lost in the swirls of Gabe's erratic breakdown, which is unfortunate because this writer's many talents could have made for another critical and popular success