My Life in France

I really liked the style of how this book was written--very organized, just as Julia was! Can you imagine writing such a cookbook as she did with no computer to keep tabs on all the testing, changes, etc? She would have loved Good Eats when Alton Brown does all his chemistry talk especially with all the testing of mayonnaise, of all things!

I realized early on that Julia and I would not be friends--she was so focused and intense. Was anyone else surprised that she didn't watch tv until after she was on PBS? Everything for her was cooking, writing, testing and eating. I was shocked near the end when she said that golf was her favorite game--when did she have time to golf?

She says at one time that she likes "eggheads"--I always thought that meant bald men! Not intellectuals.

It seems like there are probably 817 films, books, tv shows, and documentaries about Julia Child.

And that is completely appropriate, because she is the best.

Even if you have consumed all 817 pieces of aforementioned content, and even if you have made the boeuf bourguignon and watched Amy Adams make the boeuf bourguignon and mimicked the way she says "it's not just any BOUEF BOURGUIGNON, it's Julia Child's BOUEF BOURGUIGNON," all of which I recommend, you should still read this book.

It's one of the greatest memoirs I think I've read! Funny, interesting, entertaining and also educational. Extremely yummy, and sometimes gross. And above all perfectly in that effervescent Julia Child voice.

So fun.

Bottom line: Julia Child!!!!

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tbr review

life goals

Although I picked up this book because of the movie, "Julie and Julia," I soon forgot Meryl Streep and got caught up in the world of Paris just after WWII. Child's descriptions of her life in Paris in the late 1940s/early 1950 definitely made me wish I could have been there. She and her husband, Paul Child (a former OSS officer, then later a sort of cultural attache with the Foreign Service) lived life to the fullest there -- eating amazing food (out, and at home), drinking lots of wine, meeting colorful Parisians from street vendors to important diplomats. Unlike so many diplomats who live in their little ex-pat bubbles, the Childs immersed themselves in French culture, in particular, French gastronomic culture. I must admit that the writing style is pedestrian (Julia Child didn't really write it, she sort of "told" it to her husband's great-nephew, Alex Prud'Homme near the end of her life). And the book suffers a little from the "and then we did this" syndrome. None-the-less, I definitely got the sense of Child's wise-cracking, enthusiastic voice, and her culinary descriptions (and memory -- she must have kept a food diary) are mouth-watering. (Although a few recipes such as "Pressed Duck" were a little much for me. Not for the squeamish -- they suffocate the duck so it doesn't lose any blood. Later they grind it up and press out the blook. Yuk) Child also delves into the McCarthy politics of the 50s (her husband was questioned and accused of being a homosexual), and can turn a sharp and somewhat judgmental eye on various rivals and foes. The tension between Child and co-author Simone Beck is strong and wasn't depicted in the movie. Julia Child was one of a kind, and luckily, for her and for us, she found herself in Paris looking for something to do at the right time in history.

The risk you take when reading a biography of a person whose public persona is really enjoyable is that you find out things that are not so admirable. We're all human and have our faults but I found Julia Child's ivory tower attitude to be disappointing and, retrospectively, sort of insulting in this first-person recounting of her life and the path to her career.

There is a pervasive snobbery throughout the book - e.g. the mean-spirited slam on the American servicemen with southern accents, anyone who doesn't explore the culture as she does, etc. - that completely masks any humor and indicates her detachment from the very people with whom she hoped to share her love of French cuisine: the American middle and upper-middle classes. It's clear she was and remained unaware that her husband's income far exceeded most others' in post-WWII France, Germany and the United States, and outside of their well-connected, tony and intellectual "egghead" friends (as she called them), a lot of people would not have been able to afford to experience Europe as she did. With the average U.S. household income being around $3,500 in the 1950s, her sniffy attitude about her husband's $6,000-$9,000 salary, and the casual dropping of $48,000 on the Cambridge house, while most homes were in the $10,000 range and in short supply, was grating and showed a deep disconnect from the realities of life for most Americans and Europeans.

Julia Child was a truly privileged person - affluent, intelligent and well educated: lucky her - but she seems to have judged others, who did not have her advantages or experiences, by an impossible standard. That said, I truly enjoyed all the parts about food - descriptions of the food and its region of origin, the influential cooks and chefs, the trials of learning techniques, and the immense task of writing and publishing her game-changing cookbooks. I still admire her work ethic, skill and acquisitiveness but the content and tone of this autobiography left the impression that she was, paradoxically, quite ungracious.

My three-star rating in no way reflects my opinion of this extraordinary woman and her extraordinary life. Her accomplishments and accolades were many, but I wouldn't count writing her memoir among her primary skills.

France and French culture are two things I've managed to ignore for most of my life. Recently, however, I've found myself pulled ever-closer to it, with my most-admirable French lady boss, my increasingly frequent trips there and the realization that -- Well. My wife and I both occupy the more wiry end of the phenotypical spectrum, and can put away butter like nobody's business. This knowledge has brought us closer to the world Child inhabited, with its cassoulets, beurre blancs and sole meuniere.

So interesting was Child's life that many of her experiences -- transcribing top-secret information from spies while living in Burma during WWII, living in Kunming, China (and enjoying the food) during that nation's Communist takeover, learning Norwegian -- were just tossed off as minor asides in her own description. For her, her life didn't really begin until she moved to Paris, and then Marseilles. This seven-year stretch was really the heart of this book, as she took her well-to-do Pasadena Republican-bred six-foot-two-inch (188cm) frame into France and learned how to live.

One of the great pleasures of this section was her openness to learning and new experiences. New in town and without any friends, she became close to a greengrocer who taught me all about shallots, and to tell a good potato from a bad one. Child did not grow up in a foodie family; it's something she learned all on her own, hanging around accomplished cooks in Paris and eating in nice (though not always fancy) restaurants.

She also had the most fun with language during this period of her life:

I learned how to do things professionally, like how to fix properly a piece of fish in thirteen different ways, or how to use the specialized vocabulary of the kitchen -- petits des are vegetables "diced quite finely;" a douille is the tin nozzle of a pastry bag that lets you squeeze a cake decoration as the icing blurps out.

I am always pleased when blurps show up in my reading.

These early days of her marriage, learning new skills, learning a new culture and having a grand old time in Paris and Marseilles, were the best part of her life and by far the best part of this book. Had she stopped after 250 pages, when circumstances forced her and her husband to return to the US, this would have been a better book.

Some of the book sounds very strange to modern ears:

[My sister] Dortie wrote to say she was pregnant, and described herself as "fat and helpless." I was so happy for her now that she was a full-fledged woman, with a breast-full of milk.

The idea that pregnancy is a requirement of womanhood now strikes us as borderline offensive, and while many people would comfortably describe their loved ones as "with a child in the womb," the "breast-full of milk" seems a little too food-obsessed, to my ears.

After the wonder years in France, we're on the treadmill with Child as she describes the difficulties she had in writing her first and second cookbooks, the breakdown of her friendships, her political distance from her family, her new life outside of France; none of this is much fun.

But if even half of the events she describes were true, she was truly a remarkable person and I'm pleased to have learned more about her.

A thorough delight! After all her marvelous culinary contributions, Julia Child (with her nephew, Alex Prud'homme) has created a literary gem--one that will no doubt fill your tastebuds with longing but will satisfy many other senses as it is a joyous, exuberant, intelligent and touching memoir sharing her love for husband Paul, for France, and for good food! I admit that I was fascinated by Julia Child's cooking shows when they aired re-runs on PBS during my childhood--what a big woman, with such a delightfully funny voice, so very excited about cooking chickens and chopping onions! I've maintained a sort of distant fondness ever since, although now that I'm grown-up and have my own kitchen, I really hadn't given her much thought until I watched the charming "Julie and Julia" and was enchanted by Julia and Paul's heartwarming marriage and Julia's intelligence, determination and spirit. Reading her book made me wish the entire movie had just focused on her life! (It did a very good job of capturing the essentials but the book is, as always, so much MORE!)

For those who know Julia Child through her cooking shows, and her down-to-earth personality full of warmth and humor, you will find all of that in her book. And while Julia said that her work really had helped her develop as an individual she really was so much more than just a good cook. Her intelligence led her to work for the OSS (a predecessor to the CIA) during WWII where, in China, she met Paul, ten years her senior, a highly intelligent and artistic man who loved painting and photography and joined her in her liberal political views. His fascinating government job as a sort of cultural ambassador and PR man--designing exhibitions in foreign countries, maintaining good international relations, etc.--led them to various countries. It was upon her arrival in France and her very first meal at a French restaurant that Julia had a self-proclaimed "epiphany" and realized that she wanted to mold her life around good food. Julia learned French, began to take cooking classes--to give her something to do as a way of making Paris "home" Yet her passion and her talents grew beyond her home kitchen. The rest, as they say, is history!

Paul's support of Julia's endeavors was paramount even as she had to uproot every few years to move for his new assignments--they truly seemed a team. I loved the details about their life, from the sweet French stray cat that adopted them in Paris, to the delightful characters they met in the French countryside, to Julia's confession of loving rubber stamping, to her frustration over not being able to express her political views eloquently enough. The Childs thrived on intellectual society--"eggheads", as Julia called them, but those who enjoyed discussing ideas and weren't too stuck in their own ideology--and those who appreciated the arts, too. The writing style is engaging and delightful and the descriptions of France and of food made me long to visit and partake of the feast (though my vegetarian tendencies caused me to cringe at a few of the recipes, I must admit!) Though the entire book does not take place in France (it follows into their stationing in subsequent countries while Julia worked on her cookbook and to America when she began her TV series) everything in it is rooted to Julia's French epiphany and how her calling in life really began in France. It's also a marvelous glimpse at history since it briefly mentions Paul and Julia's war-time assignment, a France still raw from the war, the rise of the Communist threat and McCarthy-era hunts, and the Apollo flight! Julia's "The French Chef" cooking show was the first successful television cooking instruction program and I loved how she always referred to it as "teaching." In her second round of shows, she had the idea to travel to France to film many of the time-honored food preparation techniques that, she feared, would sooner or later phase out in the light of more modern and "convenient" technology--she wished for the shows to be a sort of time capsule and monument to the culinary tradition with which she had first fallen in love.

For those who saw and loved the movie, hurry up and read the book! You will learn so many more fascinating and charming details about Julia's life. But, truly, I would recommend this book to anyone--Julia Child fan, Francophile, gourmet, anyone interested in spending a few hours with an intelligent, warm-hearted and humorous woman whom you also wish could stay and help you cook (and then eat) dinner! :-)

"No one is born a great cook, one learns by doing. This in my invariable advice to people: Learn how to cook--try new recipes, learn from your mistakes, be fearless, and above all have fun! ... In all the days since that succulent [first:] meal [in France:], I have yet to lose the wonder and excitement that it inspired in me. ... The pleasures of the table, and of life, are infinite!" -- Julia Child

I started reading this book because supposedly the Julia Child segments in the book and movie of Julie & Julia are from My Life in France. As can be expected, the movie took a lot of liberties with the book, presenting a few facts and a lot of speculation. Surprisingly, the sections of the book about Julia Child were, for the most part, quotes from letters written by her husband, Paul Child, none of which are in My Life in France.

So it's a good thing I liked this book on its own merits and not because of its connection with Julie & Julia.

I quite enjoyed this book, for the most part. The last 20% or so was a bit tedious. It dealt with the publication of the second volume of Mastering the Art of French Cooking or, as Julia called it, Son of Mastering. The rest of it was quite interesting, especially when Paul got sent to Marseilles. Fascinating city!

Years ago, in preparation for a class project in a YA Lit class in library school, my professor asked me who my hero was. (The having of a hero apparently being a given.) I told her that I didn't really have heroes and she was aghast. "No heroes?" she asked sadly, before brightening just as quickly and asking, "What about Elenore Roosevelt?"

After reading My Life in France, however, I am happy to report that I am as close to having a hero as I've ever been. Julia Child: left-leaning, wayward daughter to her conservative parents, left home to pursue work with the Office of Strategic Services (the precursor to the CIA), lived in multiple countries in South Asia. Met the love of her life, with whom she shared a love of travel and good food, never had kids. Stumbled upon her life's work in her late thirties, learned a foreign language fluently (and several others semi-conversantly) in her late thirties, made a splendid success of herself in her forties. Had a wacky high-pitched voice to match her wacky, high-pitched personality. Could make fun of her height (over six feet) and her 'gargoyle feet' without seeming to feel secretly bad about those qualities. Clearly enjoyed her wine. Not embarrassed to be goofy. All about making a refined or otherwise inaccessible medium/field (French cuisine) accessible and interesting to a general audience without talking down to them. Self-motivated, ambitious, curious, unapologetic, and a big fan of making mistakes in public (that is to say, on air) and then learning to live with them.

Yes, I'd say that Julia Child is at the very least going to be my emotional-professional-spiritual guide going forward, if not simply being referred to as my absolute most favorite person I've never met ev-er.

Bon Apetit!