A combination of autobiography, armchair travel, restaurant and cuisine commentary, and love story, MY LIFE IN FRANCE is a perfectly delightful book.
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Child grew up as a daughter of wealth and privilege in Southern California and being too tall for the military as WWII began to rage in Europe and the Pacific, she joined the forerunner of the CIA. Paul Child was also an intelligence officer and returned to diplomatic service after the war. They met during their wartime service and in the late 1940's they moved to Europe where Paul was employed in various diplomatic assignments for the next dozen years.
Prepared with the assistance of her nephew, Julia Child's memoir covers her determination to learn to cook, her incredible perfectionism as she worked on her first published cookbook, her many dinner parties, her career as a popular PBS host, her travels, her adjustment to a life of celebrity, - and threaded through every story and shining from every page - her lifelong infatuation with, love for, and devotion to her husband.
The review of this Book prepared by A R Pickett
The book opens in 1948 with a newly-married Julia Child seeing Le Havre, France for the first time. Julia's voice is clear and the reader feels the enthusiam and uncertainty she as she contemplates the life ahead of her.
Sensory details of her first years in Paris fill the pages. Relying on detailed letters her husband Paul sent to his twin brother, Charlie, back in the States, Julia shares anecdotes of food and wine, her new marriage, life in Paris and life at the Cordon Bleu.
The books moves through Julia's years at the Cordon Bleu, L'Ecole des Gormettes, the cooking school she founded with Simone Beck Fischbacher and Louisette Bertholle in 1952, and their subsequent collaboration on French Home Cooking, finally published as Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Later chapters chronicle Julia's PBS cooking show, The French Chef.
The review of this Book prepared by Dede Perkins
