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My Life in France
 
 
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My Life in France (Hardcover)

by Julia Child (Author), Alex Prud'Homme (Author)
4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
RRP: £14.99
Price: £11.49 & this item Delivered FREE in the UK with Super Saver Delivery. See details and conditions
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Price For Both: £18.48

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Product details

  • Hardcover: 336 pages
  • Publisher: Random House USA Inc; illustrated edition edition (26 Jan 2007)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 1400043468
  • ISBN-13: 978-1400043460
  • Product Dimensions: 23.6 x 16.5 x 3 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 83,885 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in these categories:

    #40 in  Books > Food & Drink > National & International Cookery > French
    #52 in  Books > Biography > Historical > Countries & Regions > France
    #58 in  Books > Food & Drink > Cooking for Babies & Children

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Product Description

Review
" Exuberant, affectionate, and boundlessly charming . . . It chronicles, in mouth-watering detail, the meals and the food markets the sparked her interest in French cooking . . . It also tells the story of the inspired partnership between Child . . . and her husband, Paul . . . Every day in France brought a thrilling new discovery, but Child's capacity for wonder and delight co-existed with ' show me' skepticism . . . It is a wonderful picture of the most successful American export to France since Benjamin Franklin."
- William Grimes, "The New York Times
"" In mouth-watering detail, her learning years in Paris and the stellar career that followed."
- Meeta Agrawal, "Life Magazine
"" Captures her charm, warmth, and, above all, her determined and robust spirit . . . Anyone who has heard her on television will immediately recognize the frank, jovial, and embracing tone."
- John Skoyles, "The Seattle Times/Associated Press
"
"
"" What a joy . . . charming . . . inspiring."
- Jennifer Reese, "Entertainment Weekly
"
" Like a surprise nougat bursting from the center of a chocolate truffle, My Life in France also serves up her moving romance with the Renaissance man of her life . . . her husband, Paul Child." - Andrew Marton, "The Philadelphia Inquirer"

Synopsis
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 she and her husband Paul, who worked for the USIS, arrived in the fall of 1948, Julia had an awakening that changed her life. Soon this tall, outspoken gal from Pasadena, California, who didn't speak

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Customer Reviews

4 Reviews
5 star:
 (2)
4 star:
 (2)
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Average Customer Review
4.5 out of 5 stars (4 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars From Awkward Tourist to French Cooking Fame!, 25 Sep 2006
By Professor Donald Mitchell "Jesus Makes Me a P... (Boston) - See all my reviews
(TOP 10 REVIEWER)      

My Life in France is the most entertaining memoir I've read in 2006! It's a winner.

I first met Julia Child under unusual circumstances. My consulting firm was located down the street from where she got her hair done. Every Friday night, she would be seen peering into the windows to look at our art collection. After a few weeks of this, I walked outside and invited her in to tour the work up close. She was immediately studying everything from about three inches away. She thanked me politely and charged out the door. There was no hint of the slightly tipsy person filled with laughter who hosted The French Chef. Ah . . . I felt like I had met the real woman beneath the persona.

From that meeting, I gathered that she was a woman moved more than most by curiosity. I found myself also being curious about how she learned enough about French cooking to help co-author that masterwork, Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Most French people in those days would not choose working with an American as a way to produce a work about France. That would be like putting salty Virginia ham into Quiche Lorraine.

My Life in France nicely filled in all the blanks for me. The book was lovingly finished by her grand-nephew, Paul Prud'homme, after Julia's death and is filled with lovely photographs produced by Julia's husband, Paul Child.

Here's the short version of the book. Julia had been in Asia for World War II as part of the OSS and met her husband there. He was ten years older than she was and well traveled . . . especially in France. After World War II, he joined the USIS (predecessor to the USIA) which played a friendly sort of propaganda function promoting American values and ways of doing things. In November 1948, Paul landed a posting in Paris and Julia, the Pasadena, California bred daughter of a conservative businessman, was in for the surprises of her life. She fell in love with French food at her first meal! With no job in France, she began working on her language skills and learning how to cook (a new task for her!). Soon, she decided she wanted to go to Cordon Bleu. After some misadventures, she finally passed with some modest skills designed to help a homemaker rather than a chef. But she made friends with others who loved French food and eventually became acquainted with Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle. The latter two had an informal agreement to publish a book on French cooking for Americans. But they had just lost their American collaborator. Julia stepped in.

From there, much of the book recounts the decades of painstaking work that went into creating that first book and its follow-ons in which Julia played the role of making the recipes work in American kitchens with American ingredients and utensils. It's truly mind-boggling. My respect for her work is unlimited!

The book finishes with explaining how Mastering became a best seller and Julia became a television star.

Along the way, you'll meet her favorite food vendors, tutors, chefs and guests. She'll also delight you with her mouth-watering menus and how dishes turned out under different circumstances.

The title of the book is a little misleading. The material also covers time spent in Germany, Norway and the United States. You also get a full look at her marriage and the great joy that both Childs brought to their love.

Throughout, the book is filled with little Julia-isms in that humorous self-deprecating style that we all came to love on The French Chef. She lards the text with some piquant French phrases and quotes (which are usually translated more mildly into English).

As an author, I found her process of finding a publisher and working with publishers to be quite fascinating.

In her last decades, the book is a picture of grace as she devoted herself to her husband, her old friends and to French cooking.

Bon appetit!
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Wow!, 8 Feb 2007
I could not put this book down. I have personally never owned any Julia Child cookbooks but had purchased the book as I knew she had gone to Le Cordon Bleu and I wanted to know how she had evolved into such a culinary powerhouse. What struck me most about the book was the matter of fact language, it wasn't romanticized at all, but showed how she fell into cooking in her middle age and how that evolved into something so much bigger. It was inspirational for me, as it shows that one doesn't need to have picked up cooking very early on (although this is normally better), but is something that can be learned and developed well into your later years with much dedication and pratice =)

Read it!
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars It's a Wonderful Life in France!, 31 Jul 2007
By maya j "mayapapaya" (Quail Crossing) - See all my reviews
'My Life in France' is a superb book that effuses with that wonderful endearing quality we have all come to know and love in Julia Child. The book focuses mainly on the early years of developing her first cookbooks and television show.

The book begins when she and her husband, Paul, make their first trip to France because of his new job assignment. You feel her giddy excitement upon landing on the shores of a place she had for so long desired to go. We hear in minute detail the look, smell and taste of her first French meal, and from there we are introduced to "La Belle France". Before I began the book, I wondered for how long I could sustain reading each night about a person's breakfast, lunch or dinner meal that had been eaten 50 years prior, but Julia has such an adorable way of speaking, and her sometimes child-like observations of life and people around her are so heartwarming, you just wish you had been there. As the book progresses, she speaks about her collaboration with two women for her first book, and sometimes the claws come out. You're thinking, "Julia!" But, as with all friendships, there are things that agree with us and things that don't. Without some of these tidbits, the book may have been too trite, or frankly boring. Subsequently, it was interesting to hear of the minor squabbles that occurred between the women and the simple controversies concerning her husband and his role as a "diplomat". Paul and Julia Child made many friends overseas, whom they adored and loved. The majority of these people stayed in her inner circle until the end of their lives. For me, night after night, I couldn't wait to sit down and read about so many dinner parties with simmering meats and side dishes, lovely conversations, and eccentric friends. The only thing I didn't like about the book is that it ended too quickly, and I found myself missing the evenings with Julia.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars A LIFE WELL LIVED REMEMBERED
Rather than a complete biography this ebulliently phrased memoir covers the years Julia and her beloved husband, Paul, spent in France (1948 - 1954). Read more
Published 10 days ago by Gail Cooke

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