My Life in France by Julia Child (2006) is the memoir of American-born French chef living and learning in Paris, Marseille, and Provence from 1948-1954.
Julia Child (1912-2004) is known for her cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking and her television show The French Chef. Her book became the most beloved cookbook of all time.
She revolutionized American cuisine through her step-by-step, illustrated recipes and became the first celebrity chef with her own television show. Not bad for someone who couldn’t cook, couldn’t speak French, and had never been to France – until her husband Paul Child was posted there in 1948. Her skill was – eating! She loved food, and especially French food at a time when there were no French-cooking recipe books written in English.
While Paul was elegant and refined, Julia was ‘a six-foot-two-inch, thirty-six-year-old, rather loud and unserious Californian’ when they arrived in Paris two years after they married. When Paul worked at the American Embassy, Julia studied at Le Cordon Bleu cooking school – for something to do – and the rest is history. It changed her life. Julia Child says, ‘I found my true calling, experienced an awakening of the senses.’
In late 1949, television came to the United States, but not in Paris yet. Julia is not happy with the management of Le Cordon Bleu school, but is consumed with learning more. With Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle, their attempts to publish a French cooking book for Americans – in the English language – hit many hurdles. Finally, Mastering the Art of French Cooking was published, initially in one volume, in 1961. The second volume was released in 1970, and her hugely popular television show The French Chef ran from 1963-1973 in America.
Paul, ten years older than Julia, died in 1994, and Julia died ten years later in 2004.
This book is not only about the love of food and the love of cooking – and the story behind the creation of her popularity – but it is also about the 50-year love story between Julia and Paul. Like her previous successes, this book is a success too.
MARTINA NICOLLS
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MARTINA NICOLLS is an international human rights-based consultant in education, healing and wellbeing, peace and stabilization, foreign aid audits and evaluations, and the author of: The Paris Residences of James Joyce (2020), Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).
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