Reviewed by Jennifer Leblanc
12.26.07

Without her we wouldn’t have Rachel Ray, Nigella Lawson, or the Jamie Oliver. We wouldn’t have the French cooking bible, Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Without her, Bon Appetite would not be in the pop culture lexicon. My Life in France tells the story of how the inspiration epicure, Julia Child, was born.

Technically, Julia McWilliams was born in California to wealthy conservatives. She was enrolled at Smith College at birth, tried everything from creative writing and basketball to handling top secret files during World War II for the OSS (precursor to the CIA). Government work lead her to Paul Child, 10 years her senior, liberal and worldly. His post-war position had them move to France. As Child tells us, “I was a six-foot-two-inch, thirty six year old, rather loud and unserious Californian. The sight of France in my porthole was like a giant question mark.” But it would only take mere hours for Julia Child to find every answer. It all began with her first meal.

Her American sensibilities were on alert during that first lunch: wine with lunch? In the middle of the day? Paul, fluent in French, the customs, and the wine, reassured her. I won’t describe the meal – every sumptuous detail that urges you to book a ticket to France and oblige your taste buds. You must read it for yourself, along with every other delicious description she offers in her memoir. To her, this first lunch “was the most exciting meal of my life.”

As the French already knew and Julia discovered, the food was not just to be eaten – it was to be experienced. She immediately learned the language, made life-long friends, and began classes at the Cordon Bleu. Soon she finds herself in a famous French department store drooling over a giant mortar and pestle the way other wives crave jewelry.

The best was to describe it is to say that I fell in love with French food – the tastes, the processes, the history, the endless variations, the rigorous discipline, the creativity, the wonderful people, the equipment, the rituals.

Paul, her soul-mate for 50 years until his death, only encouraged her to heed the culinary call. My Life shows how history is made by passionate people.

My Life in France was not meant to be a comprehensive view of Child’s entire life, just from age 36 on. In many ways My Life fits the bildungsroman category perfectly. One could say this time period was Julia Child came of age, found herself, when her life really began.

An abundance of facts, details and side stories are told in such a slim book. Here you will learn how Mastering came to be co-written with Louisette Bertholle and Simone Beck (Simca, to her friends). How McCartheyism lead to Paul’s retirement and disillusionment with the U.S. government. There’s some insight into Julia’s rocky relationship with her father, who had wanted a quiet, submissive American daughter, not an opinionated career giant. The recounting of language errors will have you laughing out loud. It’s odd to discover that the first TV celebrity chef had only seen a television set a few times in her life before the box made her famous. The book also provides many photos from all areas of France, stages of cooking and dining, their first apartment, even the first kitchen where she mastered it all (if she could whip up perfect meals in such an archaic space, our 21st century kitchens should be pushing out regular feasts).

Although the book was written by Alex Prud’homme (Paul’s great-nephew), My Life is pure Julia – her words, her emotions, her spontaneous expressions: “Phooey!” “Ouf!” “Bravo!” Prud’homme began frequently visiting Child when she was in her early 90’s, after Paul died. My Life in France is the result of their afternoons together in her garden, as she recounted the adventurous, happy life she had led since first going to France.

Bon Appetit!