Kitchenly 434

by Alan Warner

'One of our finest writers' Michael Moorcock

'Alan Warner is one of our best living writers' Jenni Fagan

Kitchenly 434 is set in a sprawling Tudorbethan mansion in Sussex, Kitchenly Mill Race, on the cusp of the arrival of Margaret Thatcher as Prime Minister. In some ways, the last days of an Age of Innocence.

Marko Morrell, guitarist in Fear Taker, is one of the biggest rock stars in the world. His demanding lifestyle means he is frequently in absentia at Kitchenly, his idyllic country retreat, and so it is his butler (or 'help'), Crofton Clark, who is charged with the maintenance and housekeeping. When, one day, two young girls arrive looking for Marko clutching their copies of Fear Taker LPs, Crofton finds himself on a romantic misadventure which leads to the tragi-comic unravelling of the fantasies he has been living by.

A novel about delusional male behaviour, opening and closing curtains, self-awareness, loneliness and 'getting it together in the country', Kitchenly 434 is a magnificent novel about the Golden Age of Rock in the bucolic English countryside.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Novels

358 pages, Paperback

Published February 10, 2022

About the author

Note: There is more than one Alan Warner, this is the page for the award-winning Scottish novelist. For books by other people bearing the same name see Alan Warner

Alan Warner (born 1964) is the author of six novels: the acclaimed Morvern Callar (1995), winner of a Somerset Maugham Award; These Demented Lands (1997), winner of the Encore Award; The Sopranos (1998), winner of the Saltire Society Scottish Book of the Year Award; The Man Who Walks (2002), an imaginative and surreal black comedy; The Worms Can Carry Me to Heaven (2006), and The Stars in the Bright Sky (2010), a sequel to The Sopranos. Morvern Callar has been adapted as a film, and The Sopranos is to follow shortly. His short story 'After the Vision' was included in the anthology Children of Albion Rovers (1997) and 'Bitter Salvage' was included in Disco Biscuits (1997). In 2003 he was nominated by Granta magazine as one of twenty 'Best of Young British Novelists'. In 2010, his novel The Stars in the Bright Sky was included in the longlist for the Man Booker Prize.

Alan Warner's novels are mostly set in "The Port", a place bearing some resemblance to Oban. He is known to appreciate 1970s Krautrock band Can; two of his books feature dedications to former band members (Morvern Callar to Holger Czukay and The Man Who Walks to Michael Karoli). Alan Warner currently splits his time between Dublin and Javea, Spain.

Reviews

[Jonathan Pool · Rating 4 out of 5]

Synopsis

This is a book of distinct, almost separate constituent parts.

• Kitchenly Mill Race. The wonderful Kitchenly house, a rambling estate complete with moat, “air bridges”(- passageways between buildings- think a modern Bridge of Sighs), walled perimeters (frustratingly incomplete), and huge numbers of windows in numerous wings overlooking the grounds and car park. The first part of the book is primarily focuses on Kitchenly as the house has a spirit of its own, and this is described in microscopic detail.

• Crofton Clark, the lead character is the estate Manager, or more loosely in his own words “The Help”. The book charts Crofton’s progress (or lack of). Its strange to think that he’s not yet thirty years old, given his outdated sense of most everything and his awkward personality.

• Comedy sketches. Via the medium of Crofton’s bumbling and convoluted interaction with people there are a series of comedic scenes, mostly unrelated, and featuring cameo appearances by the oddest characters. Writing comedy is an art and Alan Warner goes for this, big time.

The storyline, such as it is, concerns Crofton’s stewardship of Kitchenly on behalf of his mate Marko (Mark Morrell).
As a consequence of Marko’s success as guitarist and founder of Fear Taker, he has acquired a number of properties, and his significant commercial success brings financial rewards, and with it a huge country pile (naturally). This is the early 1970’s, just prior to the music industry watershed in 1977.
A review by James Walton in the Times (27.3.21) has the great byline “Like a rude Remains of the Day”.
I was immediately reminded of Sir Henry at Rawlinson End (Vivian Stanshall); appropriately recorded in 1978, (and there’s even a Mike Oldfield connection to spot). The humour in Kitchenly is pure Stanshall.
Marko is rarely at home, and is not especially central to the story. He does like a lot of popular TV programmes, and one of Crofton’s job is to highlight the listings and to summon Marko, using a bicycle air horn hooter to sound out when a television programme that might interest him is about to air.

As the book reaches its conclusion two young girls (fans), Natandra Losey and Rose Weaver, make an appearance. It’s funny, and creepy. The reader’s perception of Crofton changes, though we had already had an insight that he possibly isn’t a charming, innocent, after he gives his personal endorsement of a particular 1970’s TOTP (Top of the Pops) dee-jay.
The conclusion of the book is wonderfully reflective and poignant.

Highlights

• What a great title! I don’t suppose the title on its own will draw readers, but its the perfect encapsulation of the different world in 1972. An era that predated automated telecommunications. There aren’t many book titles that include numerals, and the three obvious ones are all classics ( Fahrenheit 451 Catch 22 The Crying of lot 49 ).
• A certain cynicism about the purity of the music making as the motive for the performers in the prog rock era “The counterculture had become the counting of pounds and dollars culture”. “It was always about the money, then the ego” (68)
• Accountancy Services. Marko has two personal accountants; James Burton (Bill Withers fan.... he’s always leaning on something!) and Martin Dimelon. “Their work had always balanced out” . so Marko knew that his money was correctly managed! (90) “Like having two wives. If one finds out about the other it doesn’t look good”
• Laundry Day. “The mix of old wood pincers and plastic coloured clothes pegs”(126). Takes me back to hanging washing on the line.
• Comedy.
o There’s a cracking sketch about the retrieval from the moat of a dead weight stone boulder
o Haircut. Sometime sheep shearer, Mr Boniface. It’s enough to make you aichmophobic.
o Abigail (Nat’s Mum). The model of calm in the middle of a dinner from hell.


Music Favourites

• Marko’s ‘wife’ Auralie Kristiensen (her ladyshit) “she could have been on a Roxy Music album cover”(56)
That’s a perfect description of a certain look that will immediately resonate with 1970’s teenagers!!
• Karen Astley married to Pete Townshend at Didcot Registry Office. “The prettiest girl in England” - and very nice. Talked to you.
• Gary Numan. Say no more
• “all these new bands. Man! What is this bleedin’ Devo? I don’t understand Devo. I mean I’m quite afraid of those guys”

Author background & Reviews

Warner has written eight novels, and has received critical acclaim. The Stars in the Bright Sky was long listed for the Man Booker Prize in 2010. Warner’s outlook: “I’ve tried to write what I want to write”.
There’s an obvious connection here with the search for music as an end in itself, as reflected on by Crofton in Kitchenly 434.

Recommend

Yes. If you are of a certain age this book will bring back so many memories. You get the same warm feelings (nostalgia?) that you get when sitting in the pub with friends reflecting on who was the greatest band of your time. I live in Sussex, and I really got into music from 1975, so the change in style, dress, image, all resonated with me. It’s very funny, and the descriptive passages of a bucolic countryside existence, and dreamy views of moats and staircases are beautiful.

[Paul Dembina · Rating 4 out of 5]

After a slow start this really began to draw me in. The narrator's voice was unusual, pedantic leavened with some learning. My theory is that Crofton Park is on the autistic spectrum. After a series of comedic misadventures the novel ends on an elegiac note

[Angus McKeogh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Warner has a tendency to be hit or miss. For me he trends close to five stars or close to one. After reading the summary of this book I was frankly expecting a one. However, this novel was fantastic (and I’d say nearly five stars). It follows the estate manager for an aging rock star and begins rather mundanely but thereafter gets into some of the weirdest and most comedic situations imaginable. It is revealed that this man is an irredeemable weirdo with very strange relationships with women. Funny stuff.

[Ben Robinson · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's only Progressive Rock and Crofton Clark is our (anti) hero here, a prissy self-deluded type distractedly looking after the sprawling country pile that is Kitchenly Mill in deepest rural England. This is a fond satire on muso aristocracy and Alan Warner's novel is a keenly observed takedown of its arcane power structures. A sumptuous edition from White Rabbit Books here, too.

[Katy Wheatley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another entirely strange offering from Warner. This time a first person narrative of a man who started off as a roadie for a guy whose band made it big in the Eighties and who is, as the story begins, ensconced in his country pile as what he describes as the overseer of the property. It's partly a hymn to a bygone age and a dream of an England that was already gone by the time he writes. It's partly a tale of the unravelling of a man and his dreams and his desperate attempts to create meaning and structure for himself in a world he increasingly fails to understand without locking himself away from it. It's slightly gothic, slightly pastoral and is more a snapshot than a story. Exquisitely done. Eerie and disquieting, weirdly by its intense focus on the mundane and quotidian. I'm always fascinated by what Warner chooses to write about. I am always left feeling I slightly missed the memo but I don't mind that at all.

[Russell Barton · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is undoubtedly the worst novel I’ve read in recent years. It’s full of tedious descriptions that do nothing to advance the story and seem the serve no purpose other than to make the book a decent length. In particular the endless pages about pulling the curtains in the house (at one point I turned over 2 pages at once in the hope they’d be finished but no such luck) are so mind numbing that I almost lost the will to live.
The ‘and then one day’ moment that’s described on the book’s jacket doesn’t happen until more than half way through and is nowhere near as interesting as you’re led to believe. The central character has no redeeming qualities and his lust for a schoolgirl, her mum, his employer’s wife and even his employer’s mum, all at once, is disturbing and unpleasant.
Only in the last 20 pages does the book develop a sense of pace and start to come alive, with some snappy dialogue and wry observations. But it’s not worth investing your time to get that far.

[MavM · Rating 2 out of 5]

The front cover has a quote on it. 'One of our finest writers.' With hindsight, that's the first warning sign. Praise for the writer, not the book. 'One of our finest writers, but totally off form here.' would be an accurate summary. I really like Alan Warner, sometimes. Morvern Callar, The Sopranos (now renamed, the title swamped by Tony and his family), The Stars in the Bright Sky. All funny, punchy books with snappy, short chapters.

Here though, we have long overwordy chapters, narrated by a bore who is lost in his life. It's meant to be funny, but the jokes get lost, drowned by verbiage. The set ups take too long, the jokes are more comic scenes telegraphed from pages before, and the social commentary isn't really that.

One to be avoided.

[Rachel · Rating 1 out of 5]

I've read a few books set in the so-called Golden Age of Rock - Utopia Avenue, Wylding Hall, Daisy Jones and the Six - and this subgenre is one that appeals to me. However, what the back-cover copy failed to mention was that this book is narrated by a so-called 'retainer' of a rockstar's country pad, a dude called Crofton, who bears no small resemblance to a character from Gormenghast and/or the narrator of A Confederacy of Dunces. This may very well be intentional on the part of Warner, but to me the reader it was wearisome in the extreme. The turgid, multi-syllabled sentences obviously exist to show off Warner's, not Crofton's, erudition. I then began to suspect I was being trolled because this book was published in 2021, yet there's outright references by Crofton to lusting after teenage girls, relief that they're sixteen after all, a compliment to Jimmy Saville, and a long protracted sequence where he uses his employer's wife's underwear to clean a window (?) and then keeps them in order so they'll fall out during a date. A date which, moreover, reads like one of those recorded 'worst Tinder dates' on TikTok. Crofton is thoroughly unlikable and actively disgusting, the comic bits aren't, and worst of all, I'm not sure Warner KNOWS this. This book, in this iteration, has no reason to exist. The midcench males littered the canon with male buffoons like this. How did Warner live through MeToo and still present a male character who gives himself props for not making a move on a child with no insight whatsoever? Oh, right; he's also a white man.

[Kevin Tindell · Rating 4 out of 5]

A strange book this one. Not a lot happens and there are some long sections describing the country house in great detail. Some passages are laugh out loud hilarious and some others make for quite uncomfortable reading. Having said all that, it kept me captivated throughout.

[Ange Jones · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's not often that I fail to finish a book, but unfortunately this was one of them. The writing is overly verbose and i gave up at the point when the author lovingly describes curtains for about 5 pages. Not for me. The scene setting was very detailed and I could really picture the Mill, but I did not care for any of the characters at all.

[Lauren · Rating 2 out of 5]

What a boring book. So many very boring uninteresting, irrelevant sentences. I actually was wondering why I was even reading this but I had a reading slump last year so I persevered.

[Jack Deighton · Rating 3 out of 5]

This tale of a hanger-on of a rock-star, general factotum of the (oddly named it has to be said) big house, Kitchenly Mill Race, whose telephone number provides the novel’s title, at times reminded me of the style of Iain Banks. Espedair Street obviously, but also Dead Air, yet is a different beast altogether from those and different, too, from David Mitchell’s Utopia Avenue, which also hymns the prog rock era.
Each chapter is preceded by an illustration of the house – or part of it – plus a few words, like those you might find in Victorian novels, indicating what said chapter will contain. The novel is markedly lighter in tone than Warner’s previous works. Reading those I could never have imagined myself laughing out loud while enjoying one of his books. But I did here at one particular scene.
Apart from first person narrator Crofton Clark, the house is in many ways the most prominent “character” in the book. It has an extensive set of connected buildings based on the Tudor original - mostly destroyed by a fire - with Elizabethan, Queen Anne, Georgian and Arts and Crafts extensions, different sections of which are connected by two air bridges. Here is where Marko Morrell, member of the band Fear Taker (and greatest guitarist in the world – according to Crofton,) lives with his Scandinavian wife Auralie and daughter Molly. Or at least where Marko stays when he is not touring or away seeing to his business interests. Crofton patrols the place every night, switching lights on or off depending on their location and shutting all the curtains. Through his eyes we are given an extensive depiction of the rambling pile. It is almost as if the house is taking the place of that delineation of landscape which is a feature of the Scottish novel. But that box is ticked by Crofton also extensively describing the house’s surroundings.
This attention to detail, and his obsessiveness about Fear Taker’s œuvre, indicate that Crofton may be in some way autistic. Though he believes himself to be essential to Marko and the house’s smooth running he only got the job after a stint as a roadie as he was a friend from way back. He has illusions of competence but he is not as close to Marko nor as privy to his employer’s intentions as he thinks. Then there is his belief that an intruder makes his or her way onto the property at night.
Minor mishaps begin to spin things out of Crofton’s control but his life really begins to unravel when two fifteen-year-old girls from the local village come to the gate to ask for a Fear Taker album to be signed for the brother of one of them. Crofton cannot resist showing off and invites them in for a tour of the house.
Kitchenly 434 is a portrait of a man who thinks he knows who and what he is and his station in life but who is deluded about almost everything - including Doris Boardman, the good time girl he had been seeing in his home town of Stafford before she found a better option.
(Though Warner clearly intended it as a signifier of different, less informed, times there was an unnecessary and therefore needlessly provocative aside about Jimmy Savile’s effectiveness as a presenter on Top of the Pops.)

[Andy Haddon · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely loved this book.
It undoubtedly helps if you've got a working knowledge of the late 60s and 70s prog rock and music scene, and the attitudes and tropes of that scene.

And when Crofton, our pitifully deluded protagonist, expresses a fondness for Jimmy Savile, and the then newly elected Margaret Thatcher (who was a friend and staunch ally of Savile BTW), Warner is telling us that our memories, and our reality - very much like Croften's layabout existence at Kitchenly Mill Race - typically avoid unpleasantries and slip into a cossetted unreality more to our liking. *Interestingly, Alex Garland and Danny Boyle have also used Savile as a metaphor for misguided belief and trust in horror Human beings in 28 Years Later and its sequel. In that film's timeline, the apocalypse occurs BEFORE Savile is outed as a prolific paedophile.

And when Crofton dresses up as a particular innovator of synth pop, it's a visual metaphor for Crofton unwittingly accepting the transfer of power from the rock dinosaurs to the newly emerging punk rock movement.

Like the glorious Withnail and I, Kitchenly 434 reminds us that things were not any better in the past, and the accountants descending on the rambling pile like flies around the proverbial are the harbingers of the social and economic turmoil that Thatcher would unleash on the country in the eighties.

The book reads like a very British farce, all of Crofton's aloofness, self deception, paranoias and inadequacies building to a climactic scene in a pub that had me howling with laughter, the scene that follows reducing me to tears.

Like Gormenghast, This Is Spinal Tap, Saxondale and Merchant Ivory with David Keenan's Magick stirred in for good measure.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

This novel is set in the late 70's, on the cusp of Margaret Thatcher's ascendency to being UK's Prime Minister. Crofton Clark is kind of the caretaker in charge of maintenance and housekeeping of a rambling country estate owned by his old boyhood friend and now superstar rock guitarist Marko Morrell, leader of the fictional band Fear Taker, who is rarely there. Although, truth be told, Crofton rarely engages in any work, or supervising, and when he does, he stuffs it up rather badly. The novel starts off strong, sags a bit in the third quarter but redeems itself in the end. I would say it sounds as if Crofton may even be on the autism spectrum from his midadventures with woman and other relationships. Two young girls arrive at the front gate requesting some albums be signed, which leads to the biggest misdadventures for Crofton, including a rather sad romantic encounter. The summary of the book in the dust jacket is rather accurate: "A novel about delusional male behaviour, lonliness and 'getting it together in the country'. A book about the Golden Age of rock in the bucolic English countryside."

[Nigel Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kitchenly 434 is the telephone number of the sprawling country mansion of Marko Morrell,lead guitarist of a 70s rock band.

Marko’s help or retainer is Crofton who supposedly looks after the house with a Gardner and cook/cleaner.

Set in the early 80s the story is told from the point of view of Crofton, whose daily routine is interrupted by 2 young girls who show up looking for autographs for one of their brothers. Crofton’s middle aged sensibilities are disturbed and he struggles to not make a fool of himself. Does he succeed?

Warner’s book hints and captures the end of a music era without really mentioning it at all. Indeed Marko is almost an invisible presence, as all is told from Crofton’s viewpoint. A book about changing times, middle age and trying to stay cool when approaching middle age.

[Jim Levi · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent novel - fundamentally about a sad weirdo with ever more dubious behaviour and obsessions - but written in the first person, so it gradually seems perfectly understandable that our narrator is crawling across a field to peek through people's windows. The writing is beautiful - a very readable pastoral English style and really evocative of the English countryside setting. Highly recommended.

[Michael Monroe · Rating 4 out of 5]

A typically atypical book from Warner. It's a tale of two characters - the pathetic and occasionally deeply problematic narrator, Crofton, and the country pile from which the book takes its name. Of the two characters it is the house which is most beautifully realised. The writing about the stately home and grounds is tremendous. Crofton and his misadventures are less compelling, but overall it's an excellent novel.

[Pete · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved this. Kitchenly 434 is the telephone number of a rock star's (Marko Morrell, guitarist with Fear Taker) country mansion. And this book tells of the mansion and Marko's delusional steward/help Crofton Clark. Set in the late 70s, Marko is rarely at the house, so Crofton is often on his own. Some brilliantly funny scenes and the mess that Crofton seems to effortlessly end up in. Wonderful.

[Hilary · Rating 3 out of 5]

1979 ... things seem like they’re jogging on just as normal... until big change comes along. True both for society and music - and Crofton’s life reflects all of this.
Don’t expect great face paced drama but the characters grow on you and draw you in to a very real story

[Lisa of Hopewell]

I learned of this book here: https://jillsbookcafe.blog/2021/03/15...

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

Superb.

[Allan McDougall · Rating 4 out of 5]

A meander around fame

Look, there's a famous rock star, here's a rock star's mansion and flash cars, here's the faithful retainer. And young girls.

[Mr P W Martin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hillarious!

[Steve Gillway · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think I had had enough of this after 200 pages, but soldiered on. That "Abigail's party" type of humour can be pretty wearing,

[Conrad · Rating 2 out of 5]

Although Warner's descriptions of landscape, and to a lesser extent, architecture, are stunning, the protagonist is a hard-to-sympathise-with sex-offendery-stalky turd-and-panty-stealer.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

There was a review I read of this that compared the book to the Gormenghast trilogy and nope. nope. nope. It's far closer to Espedair Street, with a little Utopia Avenue thrown in. Instead of following the Big Rock Star, we get to know Crofton, once a roadie and now a butler-cum-factotum-cum-caretaker at the sprawling mansion of Fear Taker's Marko Morrell. Things don't always go well with Crofton: he sleeps through important moments, tries to protect Marko from duelling accountants, meets up with nearby groupies and slowly goes through his days at Kitchenly. Astute readers will quickly pick up on this not being sustainable... the "how" of that does come as a little surprise at the end. Definitely worth reading for the interesting character sketch, as long as you're not expecting the weirdness of Castle Groan.

[Phil · Rating 3 out of 5]

the narrator in this really had a strong dislike of accountants. I mean the first part where the 2 accountants showed up at the same time was funny and humourous but the other 3 incidents with accountants?

Anyway overall this was a good novel but I think there was room for improvement on it

3.5/5