won through to the semi-final of the BBC Masterchef programme and found himself hurled into the world of food writing. He was editor of the UK’s bestselling food magazine, BBC Good Food, for six years before taking off to rural France to create a gastronomic guesthouse. He has written six cookbooks, including A Table in the Tarn (Stewart, Tabori and Chang), which describes his French adventure, and Two’s Company (Ryland Peters & Small), devoted to the art of cooking for couples, friends and room-mates.
Murrin applied the Page 69 Test to Knife Skills For Beginners and reported the following:
Knife Skills For Beginners is set in a posh London cookery school, where chef Paul Delamare has been persuaded to teach a course at short notice. He is a charming but sad character, coming to terms with the recent death of his partner. It is on page 69 that Paul takes the reader into his confidence, describing his fall from grace ten years earlier, and subsequent meeting with Marcus.Visit Orlando Murrin's website.
It is the only moment in the book when Paul looks back, and a reader stumbling across it would assume the book is decidedly dark – which it isn’t. During the flashback, we learn of his downward spiral into drugs and depression after his mother’s suicide, and his rescue by best friend Julie (who breaks in through a window). It makes me tingle even now to imagine the pair weeping in each others’ arms, but it’s not characteristic of the book, which is essentially a social comedy.
This scene does however mark a dramatic change in Paul’s fortunes, because lower down the page he takes Julie’s advice to start with something ‘doable’ and goes for a haircut.
‘As fate would have it, sitting at the next chair was a businessman. He was deep in conversation with his stylist, not about hair length or conditioning products, but about frying pans.’ Paul leans back and angles his head to get a better look: ‘after all, that’s what mirrors in hairdressing salons are for.’ The debonair businessman is destined to be the love of his life.
The book has been described by readers as both funny and scary: humour is Paul’s defence mechanism, and if you ask me, murder really is terrifying. The review I most treasure, however, describes it as ‘unexpectedly moving’. Page 69 certainly moves me, so I'm glad the test landed there, even if it doesn't sum up the book as a whole.
--Marshal Zeringue