My Life in France
by Julia Child, Alex Prud'Homme
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Book Summary Information
Author: Alex Prud'Homme, Julia ChildEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Published)
Format: Bargain Price
Published: 2006-04-04
ISBN: N/A
Number of pages: 336
Publisher: Knopf
Book Reviews of My Life in France
Book Review: Bon Appetit!
Summary: 5 Stars
Julia Child arrived in France at the end of World War II, a 37-year-old new bride who could barely boil water. In my My Life in France ,91-year-old Julia, with the assistance of her nephew, Alex Prud'homme, tells the reader, in that unmistakable friendly, booming voice how she became the American Grand Dame of French cuisine.
This is an engrossing book full of high drama, eccentric characters, breathtaking scenery, and meals so lovingly described the reader's mouth will water. But most interesting of all is Julia, a fearless, curious American women who fell in love with French food at her first meal in Rouen.
Resolving to learn how to cook properly for her husband, Paul, she enrolled in the Cordon Bleu, the famous Paris cooking school. And the rest is history. Or, not quite. The road to success was not so easy; Julia failed her Cordon Bleu final exam the first time she took it. She and some friends wrote the definite French cookbook for the American market, eventually published as Mastering the Art of French Cooking, but the laborious project took over eight years.
My Life in France is about attitude: toward life, toward society, toward food. For Julia, these aspects were all linked. To join a society where cookery was respected as an art form was a revelation for her, yet it also felt nature. She professed a sense of coming home to this country that she had never visited before, wondering, "Am I French, somehow?"
Her love of France and its culture was beautifully intertwined with her devotion to her husband, Paul. A career diplomat as well as a gifted artist, photographer, and gourmand, his overseas posting took the couple to Paris, Marseillaise, Germany, and Norway. Their life together was a shared adventure, a true love story. My Life is France is illustrated with a number of wonderful photographs by Paul Child, as well as an assortment of the yearly Valentine's cards they designed together and sent to their friends and relatives.
While we think of French cooking as rich and fatting, the French attitude, which Julia taught us so passionately, will guide us toward healthy eating - slow down, taste real food, and share the pleasure.
A soon-to-be-released motion picture, Julie & Julia, is the story of Julia Child's years in France as well as the trials and tribulations of blogger Julie Powell as she cooks (and writes) her way through Julia's classic, Mastering the Art of French Cooking. My Life in France provides the biographical material for the Julia portions of the film.
Summary of My Life in France
In her own words, here is the captivating story of Julia Child?s years in France, where she fell in love with French food and found ?her true calling.?From the moment the ship docked in Le Havre in the fall of 1948 and Julia watched the well-muscled stevedores unloading the cargo to the first perfectly soigné meal that she and her husband, Paul, savored in Rouen en route to Paris, where he was to work for the USIS, Julia had an awakening that changed her life. Soon this tall, outspoken gal from Pasadena, California, who didn?t speak a word of French and knew nothing about the country, was steeped in the language, chatting with purveyors in the local markets, and enrolled in the Cordon Bleu.
After managing to get her degree despite the machinations of the disagreeable directrice of the school, Julia started teaching cooking classes herself, then teamed up with two fellow gourmettes, Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle, to help them with a book they were trying to write on French cooking for Americans. Throwing herself heart and soul into making it a unique and thorough teaching book, only to suffer several rounds of painful rejection, is part of the behind-the-scenes drama that Julia reveals with her inimitable gusto and disarming honesty.
Filled with the beautiful black-and-white photographs that Paul loved to take when he was not battling bureaucrats, as well as family snapshots, this memoir is laced with wonderful stories about the French character, particularly in the world of food, and the way of life that Julia embraced so wholeheartedly. Above all, she reveals the kind of spirit and determination, the sheer love of cooking, and the drive to share that with her fellow Americans that made her the extraordinary success she became.
Le voici. Et bon appétit!
Book Description
Julia Child single handedly awakened America to the pleasures of good cooking with her cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking and her television show The French Chef, but as she reveals in this bestselling memoir, she didn't know the first thing about cooking when she landed in France.
Indeed, when she first arrived in 1948 with her husband, Paul, she spoke no French and knew nothing about the country itself. But as she dove into French culture, buying food at local markets and taking classes at the Cordon Bleu, her life changed forever. Julia's unforgettable story unfolds with the spirit so key to her success as a cook and teacher and writer, brilliantly capturing one of the most endearing American personalities of the last fifty years.
Julie & Julia is now a major motion picture (releasing in August 2009) starring Meryl Streep as Julia Child. It is partially based on her memoir, My Life in France. Enjoy these images from the film, and click the thumbnails to see larger images.
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