I grew up with a gourmand as a father. He loves cooking, eating, French wine, and his favorite is French food. I have known who Julia Child was since I was very wee, and my dad's favorite moment from her television show was when she teaches how to buy a proper French baguette from the store. If you balance it over your arm and it droops, it's terrible. That's it I guess. But when she demonstrates this, the bread droops, and she hurls if offstage bellowing in her strange accent, "This is a TERRIBLE loaf of bread!" Everything about Julie is straight-forward, passionate, and joyous. My Life in France is told in Julia's energetic, enthusiastic and bold voice. She lived her life with such forward momentum, and her book is a joy to read.
Child gives a bit of background of her life, but the book really starts when she and her husband, Paul, move to Paris for his government job in the late 1940s. As Julia notes, this is really when her life started. With a lot of time on her hands, and inspired by the delicious French cuisine that she and Paul eagerly consume, Julia decides she wants to learn to cook French food. She enrolls in cooking classes at the famed Le Cordon Bleu cooking school, and learns quickly, practicing at home by cooking for Paul and their friends. Julie doesn't stop her education there, however. She shops with locals, asks questions of friends, restaraunteurs, bakers, butchers, and all kinds of French people about the culture, history, and science of all types of French food. She is bright and inquisitive and passionate about the culture of French food, and it makes her some wonderful friends. Eventually, two of her friends ask her to help them with a cook book they are making to bring French recipes to an American audience. This book is many years in the making, but it eventually becomes her famed "Mastering the Art of French Cooking." This book is what leads her to her career in food television.
The book is amazingly detailed, presumably thanks to the letters she wrote to her friends and family over the years. The book is written in her conversational and frank tone, like she's reflecting with a friend on her many adventures. Her love for food and France shine through in her lovingly detailed descriptions of the places she visits and the food she cooks and eats. Her relationships are shown in detail as well, especially that with her loving and supportive husband, Paul. Julia Child lived a life that I admire and envy. She loved her friends and family, she spent her adult life devoted to learning about food and cooking technique, and she found a place where she truly felt at home. Anyone who loves France or French food should read this book, and if you're interested in reading about interesting and accomplished women, the same. It was a great read.
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