My Life in France (2004)

My Life in France is a memoir of France and the joys of cooking by the great Julia Child, assisted by her great-nephew, Alex Prud'homme. Through her eyes we dine at restaurants in Paris, Marseille, and Provence, learn to cook at the Cordon Bleu, and become an American celebrity after the publication of her best-selling cookbooks and the success of her TV show. She was also devoted to her husband, Paul Child, a career diplomat, and he to her; they seem to have had the happiest of marriages.

This is the second time I've read this memoir, and I loved it all over again. I watched a few episodes of her TV show The French Chef part way through reading it in order to get her sonorous voice into my head, and to revel again in her sense of fun, her love of food, her good humour, her height. (Child was 6'2".) Viewing made reading more fun as the joie de vivre present in her book I could now hear in her voice. I think I would have liked Julia Child very much, which is one of the marks of successes of a memoir, I think. You see things through the author's eyes, and approve her actions and thoughts.

Anyone who loves good food whether cooked in a restaurant or at home, any Francophile, anyone who enjoys an honest, quirky, and gently comic memoir will love this book. I did. Twice. There will be a third time, and maybe a fourth. ( )

Warning! Read this book at your own risk. My Life in France* will make you fat.

Julia Child and Alex Prud'homme have written a wonderful memoir of Julia Child's journey to learn how to be The French Chef. Every page in this book focused on food; what she was eating, what she was cooking, and what she was serving. Read more ( )

So this book felt off to me about a 1/3 of the way through. I definitely liked the bits about Child learning about cooking and how she fell in love with French cooking. That said, she seemed self absorbed at times. Also I thought it was weird how Child would talk about others and say they were not intellectual. No offense, but I didn't get that she was one either. This book talks about certain things like the "Red Scare" and all, but it skips over things that I would think that Child, a supposed Democrat would highlight, like the Civil Rights Movement. I definitely got a sense of the snobbish about her at times. The ending was very rushed I thought. We somehow go from the 1970s to Child fast forwarding past 20 years to recount the deaths of her friends and her saying goodbye to a home that she and her husband Paul lived part-time in, in France.

"My Life in France" follows Child as she and her husband Paul start a new assignment in France in 1948. The book follows Child as she slowly starts to become enthralled with French cooking and then her taking cooking classes at Le Cordon Bleu. From there we have Child meeting Louisette Bertholle and Simone Beck who she would have a life-long friendship with and also co-author the famous "Mastering the Art of French Cooking."

I always tell people that memoirs are tricky. You have to be open about parts of yourself to readers and a lot of people don't do that. I have read a few cooking memoirs, and this is definitely my least favorite. I think at times it was because I felt that Child or her co-author, Alex Prud'Homme censored certain things. I was left with a lot of questions about Child and her husband Paul. I also thought it sounded like her husband suffered from several maladies that were not really discussed. I don't know, it just felt after a certain while parts of the big were skipping things. I think that the book then trying to throw into the fray the biography of Judith Jones (the woman who brought the masses "Mastering the Art of French Cooking") made the book messier.

I definitely get why Child loved French cooking. However, I don't think she ever touched upon the fact that it was cooking that a lot of people in France would not have been able to afford at the time. And honestly I think that is part of the problem with this memoir. At the end of it I didn't really care for Child much. She had a narrow minded focus on things and apparently just ignored the reality of things it seemed.

Also I have to wonder about anyone thinking this was a book that would hit it big in the United States. When this was all going on, America was starting up the war in Vietnam, the Women's Rights' Movement was starting up, we had the Civil Rights Movement gaining ground too. It just felt so weird that this book came out when it did and it hit with women in America at the time that it did.

When the big eventually ends, we somehow go from the 1970s to the 1990s and we fast forward what sounds like a round of unpleasantness for Child with her husband being in a home, some of her close friends dying, and her finally closing up the home she shared with her husband in France. ( )

(Written after reading the first thirty pages or so.)

Every now and again I pick up a book by a chef which isn't a recipe book....and I always regret it. This time shouldn't have surprised me. I'd seen the movie (loosely based on the book) and it was merely innocuous.

It could have been made 20 pages shorter, just by taking out the exclamation marks.

I guess if I were American and she was my cooking icon maybe?

But I'm not.

(Written after reading the first thirty pages or so.)

Every now and again I pick up a book by a chef which isn't a recipe book....and I always regret it. This time shouldn't have surprised me. I'd seen the movie (loosely based on the book) and it was merely innocuous.

It could have been made 20 pages shorter, just by taking out the exclamation marks.

I guess if I were American and she was my cooking icon maybe?

But I'm not.