Enjoy this article and to help us keep stories fresh and current, support our advertisers by exploring their sites. We appreciate feedback - there's room for your comments below
My Life in France by Julia Child and Alex Prud’Homme
Alex Prud’Homme, Julia Child’s nephew, interviewed his aunt over many months and the result is an almost verbatim account of her life in France and subsequent rise to fame as the doyen of French cooking. It’s a delightful story, told in a breezy, informal conversation. The larger than life icon of cooking is every bit as voluble, funny and direct in the pages of this book, as we knew her from television. Wonderful vignettes of her early struggle to master the French language, along with its culinary secrets are hilarious; disasters and triumphs abound all moving along on a stream of good wine and conversation. Much of the story is like eavesdropping on a conversation with a woman you wish you could have known.
Two particular aspects of the book struck me. One, her relationship with her husband Paul. What a supportive husband and equal partner she had in that man. Secondly, I’ll never think myself of creating a recipe. The work that she put into refining techniques to bring French cooking to the American kitchen is astounding. She was an alchemist with food.
Add to the story, intrigue with partners, recalcitrant publishers and the unexpected success of her television series and you have a riveting, can’t put down tale that will feed the need to read appetite of foodies, Francophiles, armchair and real travelers.
Buy My Life In France here
The Great Man by Kate Christensen
I picked up this book following an NPR review and was looking forward to, well, “chick lit”, but “chick lit” that celebrated and understood older (in her seventies) woman. Didn’t do it for me. The premise is great. An old man, flamboyant, self absorbed, a successful artist, dies and leaves behind not only his widow but also a mistress and domineering sister. Mistress has two daughters o the story is crammed with women. Very predictably the mistress and widow end up soul sisters; too predictably for me. The story revolves around rival biographers ‘sniffing” out the secrets of this man’s past; I’m all for older women as strong, viable characters but in this story they were just too stereotypical of magazine cut out older women. They had looks, charm, wit etc. but they had little substance. I was especially irked at the author’s seeming total lack of knowledge of older women and sexuality. The mistress’ segue into another hot romance without so much as a thought about the plaque of vaginal dryness had me laughing at the superficial portrayal of women of a certain age.
It’s light reading…the sort of book I refer to as “airplane literature.”
Buy The Great Man here
The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahari
This is a book that delights the senses, tugs at the heart and raises awareness of the aloneness of many immigrants. In an arranged marriage, a Bengali couple, the Gangulis, emigrate to the US and build a life in academia. Although the wife never directly addresses her husband by name, over the years, a strong bond develops between them as they navigate life in America. They surround themselves with Indian friends and make a pilgrimage back home every few years. Like most first generation kids, their children, Gogol, (he is the “namesake”) and daughter, Sonia , bridge the gap between their parent’s world and the new life. The story follows the family through huge celebratory meals, buying a first house, rituals, calls “home”. Gogol, bright, ambitious, is torn between wanting to discard both his name and the ties that keep him “Bengali”. The story reminds us of how difficult it is to escape our family history and raises the question of why would you want to do that.
This is a book with beautiful use of language, finely drawn and fleshed out characters; pathos, joy, anticipation about the future. It’s a curl up and read through a rainy weekend and then go out and have a great Indian meal book.
Buy The Namesake here
|
