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    My Life in France
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    My Life in France
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    My Life in France
    Audiobook11 hours

    My Life in France

    Written by Julia Child

    Narrated by Kimberly Farr

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    In her own words, 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 the ship docked in Le Havre, en route to Paris, 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 a word of French and knew nothing about the country, was steeped in the language, chatting with purveyors in the local markets, and enrolled in the Cordon Bleu.

    This memoir is laced with wonderful stories about the French character, particularly in the world of food, and the way of life that Julia embraced so wholeheartedly. Here, she reveals the kind of spirit and determination, the sheer love of cooking, and the drive to share that with her fellow Americans that made her the extraordinary success she became.


    From the Cassette edition.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateApr 4, 2006
    ISBN9781415934029
    Unavailable
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    Reviews for My Life in France

    4/5

    1,370 ratings117 reviews

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    • 4/5
      3.5 starsThis is Julia Child's autobiography (co-written by Alex Prud'homme, the grandson of her husband's twin brother) of not only her time in France with her husband Paul, where she learned to cook and started writing her first cookbook, but also of her time after she left France, continuing to work on her cookbooks, as well as starting her tv show, The French Cook. I did like this book, but I expect that someone who is a foodie might enjoy it even more. The first half did talk a lot about the food and the cooking, but I enjoyed the second half more, where there wasn't quite as much emphasis on that. It focused more on writing her cookbook and the tv show. I also enjoyed the pictures scattered throughout. There wasn't as much about Julia's relationship with Paul as I'd hoped, though.
    • 5/5
      This was an amazingly evocative memoir of the birth of Julia the chef - most of the other reviews will describe it better. I finished it this morning and was in a bad mood because it was over and the epilogue was so wistfully sad.
    • 4/5
      She's got a lot of zingers in here, but at heart, this book succeeds because of its joyous but simple recounting of several food-filled decades.

      What I wasn't expecting was to be struck by political commentary in a food memoir. Which is to say Julia ain't no socialist, but there's familiarity in the struggles she had with her conservative father and various folks scared of la différence.

      Still, Julia child had some moolah, and while travel is certainly life-expanding, her financial and education privilege does put a damper on some of my aspirational admiration. I will absolutely cook her sole meunière recipe within the month, but reading about her several houses, USIS adjacent or otherwise does put me into that deep millennial/climate-change depression where I imagine international travel and home ownership are generally drifting out of reach.

      ...also, I love reading books by and about women who did not have children.
    • 4/5
      It's almost always interesting to read biographies. After reading this one I have a better understanding of why Julia Child was so important. It was more than just her celebrity; she really did educate Americans and offer them higher standards for cooking. I have a lot more respect for her cookbooks now. I've had Mastering the Art of French Cooking for over 20 years but I hadn't thought to sit down with it and actually read it as an instruction manual rather than just a book of recipes. I'm doing that now and enjoying the process.
    • 4/5
      I read this book after seeing the film "Julie and Julia" for the second time. I really enjoyed Child's account of her life even though I'm not that much of a cook. As an American living abroad, I enjoyed reading about how she navigated and came to love an unfamiliar culture. I also appreciated her revelations regarding how she came to shape a life for herself...she didn't want was on offer in her hometown so she took a risk and joined the foreign service. As a diplomat's wife, instead of ensconcing herself in "life on the compound", she learned the language and made her way in the local culture...continuing on that path when she found herself unable to have children. I'm too young to really remember Child in her heyday (although I know who she is), but you really only need the vaguest notion of who Child is to appreciate this book. Oh, and in it's aftermath, some friends and I dug up clips of her show on youtube and taught ourselves to make great omelets in five minutes!
    • 4/5
      Charming, charming, charming.
    • 4/5
      Exactly the same persona as on her shows. I admire her work ethic and passion.
    • 4/5
      I found this book on the give-away shelf in my buildings laundry room. This was around the time that the movie Julie & Julia was being shown on cable movie channels frequently. I had watched the movie a few times, mainly because the Julie portions of the movie take place just across the bridge from where I live and I'd been trying to place which block they'd filmed on based on the neighborhood landmarks. (my copy has the movie-tie-in cover)This is Child's memoir of her time in France, Germany and Norway between 1948 and 1961, including her time at Le Cordon Bleu and the writing of Mastering the Art of French Cooking. The last section of the book covers her return to the US and her television show The French Chef. The memoir is co-written by her nephew and it reads as if it's a long story that she's telling him; it has a conversational style. Included are many photos taken by Julia's husband, Paul Child. As I neared the end of the book I started skipping over the descriptions of recipes with their extensive instructions for preparation. Mainly because all the recipes were meat, fish or poultry dishes. There was not one description of a vegetable dish in the entire book. I'd recommend this book to fans of Julia Child or books about cooking. If you're not in those categories, skip this one.
    • 4/5
      I love Julia Child. I didn't really know about her until my mum and I went to see Julie and Julia. We didn't enjoy the film because we didn't like Amy Adams characters, but I loved Meryl Streep and Julia Child.

      I started reading whatever I could get my hands on about Julia Child and this was brilliant. I love her relationship with Paul, I love her attempt to do something different, to live her life her way and to find her place in a new world that she doesn't feel she quite fits into. She's very inspiring.
    • 5/5
      This was written about a time in Julia's life when she was first married and was living in France. Her husband was working at the American embassy in Paris and her passion for cooking led her to enroll at the Le Cordon Bleu cooking school. Among things she leard there are lessons we can use on life - Do not criticize your own food it brings attention to your own faults. A very interesting story of her love ofnFrench cuisine with its richness and creamy texture and how she mastered it.
    • 4/5
      A very interesting tale, somewhat tritely told. How much of it is true, who can say? It covers most of Julia Child's adult life, but her early time in Europe is covered in the most detail. Her husband, Paul Child, was an essential part of her career, bringing his diplomatic and artistic skills to the furtherance of her television career.It is exhausting listening to descriptions of the baroque, almost mediaeval preparation and presentation of meats in France.
    • 5/5
      A fun, lively look at Julia Child's early years in Paris. Captures well the excitement of learning a new language and culture.
    • 3/5
      I guess a lot of people are reading this after seeing the movie Julie & Julia, which is what sparked my interest. Meryl Streep did a fabulous job of playing Julia Child – and the Julia sections of the movie were the only ones I really liked. The book was a fun glimpse into a completely different life than mine – the Childs were very worldly and cosmopolitan, and very earthy in the best sense of the word. I would never be comfortable in their world, but still I enjoyed experiencing it vicariously and feel a little richer for the experience. The number one thing I will remember from Julie? – don’t apologize. Don’t apologize for a dish that didn’t quite turn out, or for yourself. It is a drag for the person to whom you are apologizing to have to reassure you and demeaning to both of you. Everybody makes mistakes, so just smile and plow forward.
    • 3/5
      Written by Julia Child and her nephew it recounts her life in France with her husband Paul. Tells how Julia fell in love with France and it's food when her husband was stationed there for his work with the Usis as an exhibit director. She took cooking lessons at Cordon Bleu. She develops a friendship with two frenchwomen and together they write Mastering the Art of French Cooking. It contains many french phrases and dishes in french. Somewhat slow reading but interesting.
    • 5/5
      This woman is an inspiration! I wasn't really familiar with Julia Child, I've heard about her and I've seen the film Julie & Julia, but it wasn't until I heard some podcast episode (What Should I Read Next? podcast maybe...) that this book came under my radar. The podcast praised this book and I full-heartedly agree. It's delightful. And comforting. Julia Child was in her late thirties, early forties when she found her true calling in cookery and I found this so encouraging, because I'm a little younger than that, and I still haven't figured out what I want to do with my life.

      This was a fun and charming book about her life, her years in France and other countries, about her marriage, and her cookery-bookery as she called it. I want to go to France now and try all the delicious food (well not all, since I'm a vegetarian eating only occasionally fish, but you catch my drift).

      The narrator did a wonderful job and my only complaint about this book is that the structure was sometimes a little confusing, which I think would have been less of a problem with a printed book, but nevertheless I loved this book.
    • 4/5
      Fun. Julia is kind of a nut.
    • 3/5
      A fascinating look at Julia Child's story. Not great writing, but worth the read to learn about more about such an interesting person.
    • 5/5
      Loved this book. Julia and her husband Paul led such interesting lives.
    • 3/5
      More like 3.5, but since that isn’t an option, let’s go with three. This is a lovely little book; I just had a challenging time really getting into it. It has everything I love: food, France, humor, even liberal political leanings, Surprisingly though, I had to force myself to finish it, but I am definitely happy that I did.

      I believe this book served as the basis for the “Julia” part of the film “Julie and Julia,” where a blogger takes on the recipes of Mastering the Art of French Cooking while we learn what life in France was like for Ms. Julia Child. I think it’s universally agreed that everyone liked the parts of the film that focused on Ms. Child (played by Meryl Streep) and would have preferred a film just focused on that. I agree, and think the book is so rich with description that there is plenty for multiple films.

      The book isn’t just limited to Ms. Child’s life in France with her husband Paul Child (who was a cultural ambassador in the Foreign Service); it instead feels more like a memoir focused on the last fifty-plus years of her life (she died just a couple of days before her 92nd birthday). But much of that was spent living in France (also Germany, Norway and Boston). She shares about her time at Le Cordon Bleu, as well as the process behind creating Mastering the Art of French Cooking (Volume I and Volume II).

      The language is vivid, although the book feels a bit slow. However, perhaps that is appropriate. Proper French cooking takes time, and isn’t something one can just dash off quickly; maybe Alex Prud’homme (who assisted his great Aunt in writing this book) recognized this and felt that there was no need to rush the story. If you like France, or food, or have fond memories of Ms. Child’s cooking show, I think this is a sweet book to check out.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      Interesting. I can't say I was crazy about the style, or Julia herself, for that matter, but her enthusiasm and energy came across clearly (relentlessly!) and I found her story to be, mostly, engaging.Though I'm not actually interested in French food as a general thing, I do remember Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking as a fixture on my mom's cookbook shelf, and I find the social history aspect of the thing – the growing curiosity and excitement about gourmet cooking alongside the increasing availability use of convenience foods among American home cooks in the 50's and early 60's – an appealing subject.As I read I found myself swinging between aggravation at her brash, self-congratulatory tone and admiration for her passion, curiosity, and drive. I can only imagine how exhausting she must have been to work with, but what a dynamo! And there were several points where my irritation at her “holier than thou” attitude about her father or others was mitigated by her fuller explanation of circumstances – the McCarthy witch hunts really were awful, and the racist, anti-Semitic attitudes of her father and his country club set were instrumental in allowing these un-American persecutions to last as long as they did. Her letter to a McCarthyite committee member at Smith College, Child's alma mater, who was recklessly communist-hunting among the school's professors, inclined me to forgive her a fair number of condescending generalizations about Americans:”In the blood-heat of pursuing the enemy, many people are forgetting what we are fighting for. We are fighting for our hard-won liberty and freedom, for our Constitution and the due processes of our laws; and for the right to differ in ideas, religion, and politics. And I am convinced that in your zeal to fight against our enemies, you, too, have forgotten what you are fighting for.”As I said, I'm not a “foodie,” but there were places where Julia's lovingly detailed descriptions of the taste, texture, and smell of meals made me (briefly) feel like getting up to go mess around in the kitchen. Multi-course, complicated meals aren't my thing, but visions of luscious slices of beef wrapped in delicate buttery pastry were dancing in my head. I've never seen her on television, but I'm going to look for some episodes of her show now – her excitement about delicious food really comes across in this book. The challenge of writing down complicated recipes in a way that fully explains but does not intimidate was something I'd not thought much of but learned to appreciate here, and also the issue of translating recipes for readers whose ingredients may be different from the ones the author is using (French flour vs American flour, French chocolate vs American, etc.). Who'd have thought?Still, there were several aspects of the book I found annoying. The writing itself probably well conveys Julia's storytelling style – it is very breezy, enthusiastic, and sincere. The way the book was written – Julia told stories to Alex Prud-homme and he wrote them up and showed them to her to approve – is very evident. This offers immediacy, but also gives a certain “jumpiness.” Especially in the case of Julia's relationship with her collaborator, Simone Beck, she shifts between describing Simca as a dear friend and valuable partner to claiming that she was careless, uncooperative, and unreliable. Sometimes things are mentioned which seem as though they will have some relevance to the unfolding story, and then they never do. There are some things that struck me as odd that may simply be a function of a ninety-two year old looking back on her life. She describes a restaurant dinner that she and Paul had in France: “Here we were, two young people obviously of rather modest circumstances, and we had been treated with the utmost cordiality, as if we were honored guests. The service was deft and understated, and the food was spectacular.” You might think that they were in their early twenties at this time, but actually Paul was 46 and Julia was 36. And, similarly, she tells about her younger sister visiting them and making obnoxious prank calls to Parisian shops. To hear Julia describe it she clearly thought her sister was engaging in adorably youthful hijinx, but her sister was 31 at the time. In places her dated slang also was a distraction. Still, the story of how an aimless new bride developed into an internationally known cook and author, and how she became an iconic figure on television, rises above these peculiarities and flaws and offers some interesting insights into American social history. Three and a half stars.
    • 5/5
      I love this book! I fell in love with Julia and Paul and their way of life; their attitudes and philosophy for living. I love the live they lived in and out of France. I found myself wishing I could have met her and taken cooking lessons from her. And I definitely found myself really wanting a copy of Mastering the Art of French cooking! This book is a travel log, a cooking log, and memoir all wrapped up in one. Julia Child was a unique individual who changed the world of cooking, cookbooks and recipes, and she was one of the very first celebrity chef. Bravo, Julia!
    • 5/5
      With the Julie/Julia craze, readers will be looking for more about Julia Child. This memoir written by Ms. Julia in her eighties, looks at her life in France, beginning in about 1948 through her return to the US and the ultimate publishing of her two books with Simone Beck.

      The wit, determination and joy of Julia Child shines throughout this book. The woman who tells American cooks "you can use canned chicken broth, it's your kitchen, who's going to KNOW!" is almost maniacal in getting a recipe right...testing and retesting, and then testing again with American ingredients (did you know French flour has less gluten than American flour? Makes it hard to get a baguette to turn out right).

      My advice...skip Julie and go right to Julia. She is a fascinating woman who changed how Americans look at food and cooking. IMHO she's a National Treasure twice over (both for France and the USA :)
    • 4/5
      A delightful romp with the first foodie, Julia Child. Makes me want to learn French, take a trip, and grab a copy of her cookbook.
    • 3/5
      I enjoyed discovering about Julia Chilld's love of cooking and her time in France. A must read for all cooking fans.
    • 5/5
      This book was pretty amazing. It is told in the first person and you really feel like Julia is talking to you. She tells us the story of how she got involved in cooking and the great personalities she has worked with and been friends with. The book is filled with pictures of her and her friends and some artistic shots taken by her husband Paul. The beginning of the book is more detailed and has a lot more going on, this could be for several reasons, she passed away while it was being written, so they may be less finished, or as she got older, she did less, unfortunately we will never know. Like all memoirs, Julia and Paul come across as wonderful people who rarely did wrong and who had much done to them, especially Paul, who was investigated by the government for being a homosexual and communist and who was always undervalued by his bosses. But really, everyone is undervalued by their bosses so this is highly believable. Julia's memoir makes you feel like she is a friend telling you about her life; extremely enjoyable and well worth reading.
    • 5/5
      I loved this! Julia Child is now one of my heroes. She is one of those people who seems to have figured out that elusive question: how to be happy and have a full and meaningful life.

      I will add something more coherent when I can put it together...
    • 4/5
      I grew up watching Julia Child on PBS--I was born in Cambridge, where she filmed her television shows--and always found her fascinating. There was something about her personality and willingness to soldier on despite mistakes (I remember her making a few) that endeared her to me, that and her funny voice. I found her memoir to be just as engaging as her shows were, with lots of personality and lots I didn't know about her, including details of her family life in California and her travels abroad. Definitely recommended.
    • 4/5
      Audiobook read by Flo Salent Greenberg

      From the introduction: This is a book about some of the things I have loved most in life: my husband, Paul Child; la belle France; and the many pleasures of cooking and eating. It is also something new for me. Rather than a collection of recipes, I’ve put together a series of linked autobiographical stories, mostly focused on the years 1948 through 1954, when we lived in paris and Marseille, and also a few of our later adventures in Provence. Those early years in France were among the best of my life.

      My reactions
      What a delightful – and delicious – memoir. I really got a sense for the determination with which Julia mastered the art of French cooking, and for the enthusiasm with which she set out to impart that love of French cooking to the rest of the world. The vignettes are charming, touching, funny, exasperating, worrisome, tender, and full of the joy of life. I liked the snapshots that were included, but wish that more of them had actual captions.

      Flo Salent Greenberg does a marvelous job voicing the audio version. But be careful. A friend presented this to me as a gift, and it was only after I opened it that I realized it was abridged. I was able to get a UNabridged version through my library, however. Of course the audio book cannot include the wonderful photos, either.
    • 4/5
      Reading this made me hungry! Julia Child has such a warm and frank style of writing, shot through with her focus and prefectionism. She had a great memory for detail and this is a wonderful read as a result. I didn't realize how bohemian she was for her time. Child was also a keen observer of people, and the memoir is rounded out with a cast of equally interesting friends and family, and an occasional adversary.
    • 5/5
      I picked this one up after seeing "Julie and Julia," which I quite enjoyed. Like others of my generation, I'd grown up knowing who Julia Child was, but I'd never actually watched an episode of her show, nor bothered cracking one of her cookbooks. I was more familiar with Dan Akroyd's version of her than anything.

      I found myself entirely enchanted with the version of her portrayed by Meryl Streep in the movie--was she really that upbeat and determined? And how fascinating that she lived in France by virtue of a government posting! I wanted to know more.

      What I found in reading the book was that Julia really was just as Streep envisioned her: her quirks and mannerisms were delightful, and she really was just as optimistic and ambitious as the movie version. I enjoyed reading about how she met her husband, their years of government service, and her journey toward success through cooking and writing, and I'm off to buy "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" today. What a lovely woman!