Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Kitchen Privileges: Memoirs of a Bronx Girlhood
    Kitchen Privileges: Memoirs of a Bronx Girlhood
    Kitchen Privileges: Memoirs of a Bronx Girlhood
    Audiobook5 hours

    Kitchen Privileges: Memoirs of a Bronx Girlhood

    Written by Mary Higgins Clark

    Narrated by Mary Higgins Clark

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Angela’s Ashes comes home to the Bronx in a brilliant, touching, charming, and bittersweet account of a childhood during the Depression from America’s Queen of Suspense.

    Mary Higgins Clark’s memoir begins with the death of her father in 1939. With no money in the house—the Higgins Bar and Grill in the Bronx is failing and in debt, and worry about it is one of the things that has killed her father—Mary’s indomitable Irish mother (she devotes a chapter to her “Wild Irish Mother”) puts a classified ad in the Bronx Home News: “Furnished rooms! Kitchen Privileges!” Very shortly there arrives the first in a succession of tenants who will change the lives of the Higgins family and set the young Mary on her start as a writer, while bringing to them all a dose of the Christmas spirit that seemed to have vanished with Mr. Higgins’s death.

    Full of hope, faith, memorable characters, and warmth, Kitchen Privileges brings back into sharp, nostalgic focus the feeling of growing up poor, but determined to survive, in a vanished Bronx that was one of white lace curtains instead of a slum, and at a time when everybody was poor and either needed or offered a helping hand.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster Audio
    Release dateNov 1, 2002
    ISBN9780743545136
    Kitchen Privileges: Memoirs of a Bronx Girlhood
    Author

    Mary Higgins Clark

    The #1 New York Times bestselling author Mary Higgins Clark wrote over forty suspense novels, four collections of short stories, a his­torical novel, a memoir, and two children’s books. With bestselling author Alafair Burke she wrote the Under Suspicion series including The Cinderella Murder, All Dressed in White, The Sleeping Beauty Killer, Every Breath You Take, You Don’t Own Me, and Piece of My Heart. With her daughter Carol Higgins Clark, she coauthored five suspense novels. More than one hundred million copies of her books are in print in the United States alone. Her books are international bestsellers.

    Related to Kitchen Privileges

    Related audiobooks

    Personal Memoirs For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      TOM & KATIE FINALLY THE TRUTH ABOUT SURI AND SCIENTOLOGY

      Mar 7, 2021

      Almost a decade after Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes’ 2012 divorce, New Idea has learnt the actress is being courted by book publishers to dish the dirt on her  tumultuous marriage to the Scientology figurehead. Insiders close to Katie, 42, maintain it’

      2 min read

    • Article

      Home Bound

      May 18, 2020

      Home Bound
      6 min read

    • Article

      Summer Reading Guide

      Jan 2, 2022

      Summer Reading Guide
      6 min read

    • Article

      As the World Collapses

      Jul 27, 2017

      As the World Collapses
      7 min read

    • Article

      Allegiance

      Nov 6, 2023

      Allegiance
      12 min read

    • Article

      The Last Friend on Earth

      May 4, 2023

      It was as if Doreen Saunders had been waiting for me, passing the time until my arrival. She might as well have been sitting in a rocking chair, knitting needles clicking, jam tarts cooling on the side, the door wide open, waiting for the next visito

      6 min read

    • Article

      A Southern Christmas

      Nov 1, 2023

      A Southern Christmas
      7 min read

    • Article

      Across The Whited Fields

      Oct 13, 2019

      In a twilight streeta small girl laughing. The red and yellow flowersprofuse, inhale the air. We want to hold your name,Polly, dancing in the rain Polly, skipping down the street.Sometimes the world bequeaths then takes away the one to whomou

      14 min read

    • Article

      All Of Us Here

      Jun 4, 2020

      All Of Us Here
      6 min read

    • Article

      The Posting

      Jun 27, 2023

      The Posting
      35 min read

    • Article

      Four Of A Kind

      May 3, 2023

      Four Of A Kind
      4 min read

    • Article

      Our Door Was Always Open

      Jan 30, 2024

      I once thought my folks invented the opendoor policy. Our door was always open. Whether it was a neighbor searching for his cow who’d escaped through a low spot in the line fence, a student selling magazine subscriptions, or a Watkins salesman, all w

      3 min read

    • Article

      My Country Childhood

      Sep 4, 2019

      AUTHOR AND FORMER executive director of the Australian Writers Guild, Angela Wales, 71, moved from Bondi in Sydney to Walcha in the Northern Tablelands of NSW when she was five years old. Angela’s father, Bob, was to take over a struggling sheep prop

      7 min read

    • Article

      There’s No Place Like Home: An Artist Reconnects to the Whispers of Her Past

      Apr 7, 2023

      Estimated reading time: 13 minutes — I would be remiss in telling you how two suburbanites found home at our farm, ‘Oakhaven’, without first sharing our motives. There were a few. We had been watching the steady decline of the small towns we love fo

      8 min read

    • Article

      My Favourite Memory Of…

      Jun 15, 2023

      My Favourite Memory Of…
      4 min read

    • Article

      Forever Wild

      Oct 1, 2018

      When I think of the Scarborough house, I remember the wind whipping through my salt-hardened curls and my little-girl feet bare and crusted with sand as I run through its heavy wooden doors. I was four and wild as the landscape itself. My grandparent

      3 min read

    • Article

      When I Say Goodbye

      May 31, 2018

      When I Say Goodbye
      16 min read

    • Article

      Summer Beach Reads

      Jan 10, 2021

      Summer Beach Reads
      7 min read

    • Article

      Little House

      Jun 5, 2023

      On Monday nights our mother made popcorn and served it to us in mugs with milk poured over. My younger sister and I carried our mugs into the family room and ate the popcorn with spoons, like cereal. We were five and seven. Until we were allowed to s

      21 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Kitchen Privileges

    3.5/5

    108 ratings13 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      I absolutely loved this book. Mary Higgins Clark was not looking for sympathy, but instead wrote a book filled with more laughter than tears. Just the bare outlines of her life could lend itself to a "poor me" tragedy, but she keeps it light and while I shed a few tears most of them were from laughing. She wrote of her second marriage which lasted seven years that it was a disaster. That's it. Mary just kept on writing, taking care of her five children and being a great success while maintaining her modesty as prescribed by her family and the "good Sisters" who taught her. Thanks for all the entertainment you have given to your readers, Mary.
    • 3/5
      She may be the queen of suspense, but Clark's autobiography is only okay. She's led an interesting life and she is discreet, but I thought it would be more about her childhood, and it wasn't.
    • 5/5
      What a determined but contented woman. I loved her story
    • 5/5
      I used to read a lot of Mary Higgins Clark's books, and have actually read this one, years ago. I love it because it's really inspirational, without being over the top. Clark writes honestly and simply about her childhood and her dreams. While she has lost many loved ones, often closely together, she never dwells on it or asks for pity. Instead, she was always driven to find a better job to help support her mother and brothers, and later to support her five children. You'll find yourself tense as she gets rejection letters, then celebrating with her as the publishing offers start to roll in.
    • 5/5
      Loved listening to your life. I also am a follower of you. Love your books.
    • 3/5
      Mary Higgins Clark is one of those novelists who churns out 1-2 books every yer and continues to do so even though she is now 90.This is a memoir of her life growing up in the Bronx, her school days and how she became a writer. It's a pleasant talw, but tehre is nothing here that's very dramatic, and it almost seems like after making tons of money for her publisher, they let her do this book as a vanity project.
    • 3/5
      I learned a lot about Mary Higgins Clark.She was a stewardess. She wrote for the radio. Her husband Warren's early death. It was very interesting.
    • 2/5
      Boring. Sorry, I am sure you all readers of Mary Higgins Clark want to love this book, but it is not what you expect. It is shallow, without detail, full of expectated things and truly boring. Sorry, I tried to love this book, but it never came to life.
    • 4/5
      Kitchen Privileges is the memoir of Mary Higgins Clark, the mystery writer. More than a connected story, it seems like small vignettes from her life. It begins in her childhood around the time of her father's death and ends with her third marriage in 1996.Hers is a story full of many tragedies yet her love of life and marvelous sense of humour shine through every page. I notice others mention that she could have spent more time on her writing but I think this story is perfect the way it is. She clearly loved to write but, more than that, she loves her family, her friends, life. it seems only right that she should start the story with the death of the first man she loved and end it with the last. Whether you are a fan of her mysteries or memoirs or just want a story full of love and laughter, this is definitely a book worth reading.
    • 4/5
      A memoir of another time. Clark lived through the Great Depression as a child. Always interesting to see how the world has changed over the past almost-100 years through the eyes of someone who paid attention, and to see how someone got to where they are now.
    • 5/5
      I am a big fan of Mary Higgins Clake and I enjoy her books. When I came across this book at my library , I was just delighted to find out more about the author and her life. Mary went through many heartaches during her life esp. the loss of her Dad,age 54, and the death of her husband ,Warren. Mary pointed the many tradegies in her life including being a Stewardess for Pan AM Airlines, marriage, kids, widowhood, writng, and remarriage.MHC never up and went on to become one the best Mystery Writers in her genre.
    • 4/5
      Clark's memoir is very brief but paints a vivid picture of growing up in a close-knit, affluent, Irish Catholic family in the Bronx during th 30's and 40's. This is a highly readable memoir. The writer is kind in her memories of people and events and her own drive and energy, while not particularly emphasized, are unmistakeable and impressive.
    • 3/5
      Sketchy bio of best selling author.