Service

Celebrity chef Daniel Costello worked his way up from working in restaurants as a boy to owning T, a two-Michelin-starred establishment in Dublin. His life with his wife Julie and their two sons looks picture perfect until he is charged with sexual assault. The story is told by three narrators: Hannah, who was a server at T while she was a student and was thrilled to have a job at such a prestigious establishment, Julie, Daniel’s wife, and Daniel himself. When Hannah hears about Daniel’s trial it takes her back to the summer when, as a student, she was drawn into the turbulence of a high end kitchen. She was good at her job and was considered a protege. She recalls the tremendous pressures of the job and also the camaraderie of the staff once the shift was done and every night ended with a party. Daniel’s wife, Julie, stands reluctantly at his side through the trial but resents the negative attention it has brought to her family. Many of their friends have become distant since the charges were laid and bookings at the restaurant have fallen off.  Her sons are showing signs of stress. Their life has become a shambles. Daniel hires a top female lawyer and makes the difficult decision to close the restaurant until the trial is over. He is angered that an allegation from years ago is threatening everything he has worked very hard to achieve. Whose truth do we believe? Service was written  in 2023 when the Me Too movement which had drawn attention to workplace sexual abuse and the self-entitlement of men in positions of power was at its peak. It lays bare Ireland’s still patriarchal society and a legal system that is skewed against victims. It left me wanting to read Gilmartin’s previous book, Dinner Party: A Tragedy, which tells the story of a dysfunctional family.