memoir
As one would expect from the title, this memoir covers a
period of Julia Child’s life while she and her husband were frequently living
in Europe, particularly France.
I figured I wouldn’t love My Life in France and I was right.
First, I’m not a huge memoir lover because I usually don’t care enough about celebrities
to read about the details of their lives. Secondly, I’ve never been a big Julia
Child fan. It’s nothing personal, I just have never enjoyed cooking and I’ve hardly
watched cooking shows. Julia was famous
when I was too young to even have an opinion about cooking and my main memory
of her was her silly voice. Alas, I wanted to give it a try for the sake of my book
club. I’d already blown off reading this book for another book club (and the
members had generally enjoyed it) so I decided it should be attempted.
The main threads in this novel are, appropriately, living in
France and cooking. However, most of the story, while chronological, bounces
around from topic to topic—some of which seemed insignificant enough that I
questioned why they were published.
There was no plot or mystery to keep me interested until Julie finally
started working on a cookbook. Since I’m not passionate about the cooking or
the level of food detail in this book, I skimmed a LOT. I persevered.
I got a little kick out of the fact that Hadley Hemingway made a few appearances in this book since I’ve only recently read The Paris Wife about her. In fact, the European jaunts in My Life in France were very
reminiscent of Hadley and Ernest’s jaunts. It was obviously something that was
done in the 1950s and 1960s—even for those with very little money. Of course, the Childs were able to do much of
it thanks to Paul Child’s employment with the military. But I enjoyed
recognizing the similarity in their stories.
It’s obvious that Julia Child was “a character” and it
sounds like she was a fun person, driven by her passion. If you are a Julia
Child fan and/or a foodie—particularly about French cuisine—you will enjoy the
memoir more than I did.
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