Six Degrees of Separation from Kitchen Confidential to Wycliffe and the Last Rites

Published on by Margaret

It’s time again for Six Degrees of Separation, a monthly link-up hosted by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best. Each month a book is chosen as a starting point and linked to six other books to form a chain. A book doesn’t need to be connected to all the other books on the list, only to the one next to it in the chain.

This month starts with  Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain described by Amazon:

After twenty-five years of ‘sex, drugs, bad behaviour and haute cuisine’, chef and novelist Anthony Bourdain decided to tell all – and he meant all.

From his first oyster in the Gironde to his lowly position as a dishwasher in a honky-tonk fish restaurant in Provincetown; from the kitchen of the Rainbow Room atop the Rockefeller Center to drug dealers in the East Village, from Tokyo to Paris and back to New York again, Bourdain’s tales of the kitchen are as passionate as they are unpredictable, as shocking as they are funny.

I spent more time than usual deciding which route to take with my chain. I considered starting with another book by a celebrity chef, and there are plenty to choose from, or a book with ‘kitchen’ in the title, but both chains just fizzled out.

So I opted to start with a book by an author with the same initial letters in the surname:

The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett, telling the story of Her Majesty, not named, but she had dogs, took her summer holiday at Balmoral and was married to a duke. She came across the travelling library outside the palace and borrowed a book to save the driver/librarian’s embarrassment. 

Also by Alan Bennett The Lady in the Van, is one of the stories that I read in his collection Four Stories. It’s also available as an e-book. In 1974, the homeless Miss Shepherd moved her broken down van into Alan Bennett’s garden. Deeply eccentric and stubborn to her bones, Miss Shepherd was not an easy tenant. And Bennett, despite inviting her in the first place, was a reluctant landlord. And yet she lived there for fifteen years.

Lady Susan by Jane Austen is a unfinished novella in Lady Susan, The Watsons and Sanderton. Told in a series of letters it’s the  story of an unscrupulous widow who plans to force her daughter into a marriage against her wishes.

Lady Susan reminded me of Laclos’s Les Liaisons Dangereuses, not just because both are epistolary but also the content – manipulative and evil characters without any moral scruples, who delight in their power to seduce others. One of the characters is an innocent convent girl, Cecile Volanges.

Another character called Cecile is in Cecile is Dead by Georges Simenon, one of the best Maigret books I’ve read – and it is complicated, remarkably so in a novella of just 151 pages. 

Another novella in the crime fiction genre is Wycliffe and the Last Rites by W J Burley – set in Cornwall. Detective Chief Superintendent Wycliffe investigates a bizarre murder that shakes the village of Moresk. Arriving at church on Easter morning the vicar discovers the body of a woman sprawled across the chancel steps.

Well, this is my chain travelling from cooking to murder and passing through royalty, to eccentric and unscrupulous characters.

Next month (January 6, 2024), we will start with Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin.

20 thoughts on “Six Degrees of Separation from Kitchen Confidential to Wycliffe and the Last Rites”

  1. Well, despite being an Alan Bennett fan, I’d not come across The Uncommon Reader. I have now! In fact you’ve constructed a chain composed of authors whose work I know (apart from de Laclose & WJ Burley), but not the particular book you discuss. An enticing chain.

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  3. What a clever way to do this chain, Margaret! I really like it. And I’m very glad to see you’ve a Wycliffe here. I haven’t thought of those stories in a while, and it’s nice to be reminded of them.

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  6. Great chain! I loved The Uncommon Reader and should really try something else by Alan Bennett. I’ve enjoyed a few of Simenon’s standalones, but haven’t got round to the Maigret series yet.

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  7. I’ve read three of your books, Kitchen Confidential, The Uncommon Reader and Lady Susan. Plus I’ve seen the film of The Lady in the Van. I don’t know that Maigret though, I must look it up. An entertaining and clever chain, Margaret.

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  9. It doesn’t sound as if you read Antony Bourdin but with your penchant for detective novels – I think you would enjoy his exploration of the underbelly… Interesting chain!

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  10. Some excellent books there! I enjoyed both the Alan Bennets several years ago, and that Maigret is one of my favourites. I’ve never read any of the Wycliffe books – must try them one day!

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