My Life in France
By Julia Child and Alex Prud’homme
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Reviews Love letters Julia Child's passions—for France, for food, and for her husband, Paul—run clear and deep in this posthumous account. G.E. Patterson, Special To The Star Tribune It's rare to be carried away by someone else's delight, but 45 years ago Julia Child proved that pleasure and passion could be contagious. "Mastering the Art of French Cooking," the book she co-authored in 1961, signaled a change in American life. A runaway bestseller, that straightforward guide to preparing fresh and satisfying meals countered the trend toward processed foods and persuaded many home cooks that their time and care could deepen "the pleasures of the table, and of life." The next year, at 50, Child brought her signature enthusiasm to television. Her Emmy-winning public television series, "The French Chef," ran nationally from 1963 to 1973 and brought her into even more U.S. homes. Eight other public television shows, another dozen cookbooks and several national and international awards followed. She remained active and vibrant until her death in August 2004, two days before her 92nd birthday. Her new book, the posthumously published "My Life in France," tells us about Child's life inside and outside the kitchen — the things she did and the people she knew, especially her husband, Paul. This is an engaging memoir about a crucial time in her life, when she was discovering who she was. She describes this period with characteristic joie de vivre: [I was having] "such fun I hardly stopped moving long enough to catch my breath." "Appetite for Life," a careful biography by Noel Riley Fitch, and many profiles and interviews have already set out Child's basic story. She grew up in California, went to Smith College in New England, lived in New York for a few years, returned to the West Coast and worked for the wartime Office of Strategic Services (the precursor to the CIA) in Asia. There, the 6-foot-2, "loud and unserious Californian" met the cultured and intellectual Paul Child and fell in love. It was 1944; they were married in 1946 and sailed to France in 1948. Which is where her book picks up. A big part of the fun was being in France with Paul Child. He worked for the U.S. Information Service, promoting French-American relations through the visual arts. She was about to discover a similar cross-cultural project with cooking. Several chapters highlight the hard and steady work Child devoted to cooking, testing and writing recipes that were almost foolproof. Other chapters chronicle the irritations of life abroad and "the sweetness and generosity and politeness and gentleness ... of the French [who taught her] how lovely life can be if one takes the time to be friendly." Every chapter conveys her intense love for her husband. "A sometimes macho, sometimes quiet, willful, bookish man" Paul was 10 years older than Julia, and her great encourager. But he was not the man Julia's father had imagined for her. "My father," she tells us, "had assumed I would marry a Republican banker and settle in Pasadena to live a conventional life. But if I'd done that I'd probably have turned into an alcoholic, as a number of my friends had. Instead, I had married Paul Child, a painter, photographer, poet, and mid-level diplomat who had taken me to live in dirty, dreaded France. I couldn't have been happier!" In fact, happiness is the touchstone of this memoir; it links the lovely sketches of the Childs' days and nights in Paris and elsewhere — Marseille, Massachusetts, Maine, England, rural France. There's also a detailed and valuable diaristic quality to Child's reminiscences. A social and political sketch of the time emerges when Paul's concern about "the wily Commies" invading Western Europe and his battles with foreign-service bureaucrats and McCarthyite slanderers are brought together with Julia's French lessons, Cordon Bleu classes and her collaboration with two aristocratic French women on the 1961 cookbook. "My Life in France" summons the flavors and nuances of so many experiences with remarkable clarity. Whether writing about a meal from 1948 in three rich pages, about the people of the Côte d'Azur in a few short paragraphs, or about the significance of friendship, Child conveys a lasting wonder and excitement. "You never forget a beautiful thing," Child's Cordon Bleu teacher told her. "Even after you eat it, it stays with you — always." Child tells us, after describing another memorable meal, this one from 1952: "When you know your time in a place is running out, you try to fix such moments in your mind's eye." Fixing such moments is, indeed, her aim with this book. She spent the last nine months of her life working on it with her grand-nephew Alex Prud'homme. Untold credit goes to Prud'homme for his skillful efforts in bringing this lively account of her very happy days into print. My Life In France By: Julia Child with Alex Prud'homme Publisher: Knopf, 317 pages, $25.95 Review: An engaging autobiographical chronicle that recounts Child's life and times. The fine black-and-white photographs are by her husband, Paul Child. Poet and translator G.E. Patterson teaches creative writing at Metropolitan State University. ©2006 Special To The Star Tribune. All rights reserved.
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