My Life in France

I went through a bit of a Julia Child moment a few months ago, which was when I picked up My Life in France from Brotherhood Books. I'd watched the first season of Julia with Sarah Lancashire, and I must have seen something else too, because I became quite intrigued by this tall, practical woman with the love of French cooking (and don't tell me that Bonnie Garmus' Lessons in Chemistry doesn't owe something to Julia Childs' story).

I finally got around to starting My Life in France while I was on holiday in Cairns, and due to many interruptions I've only just finished it now. I have absolutely zero interest in French cooking, but I am very interested in life in Europe in the post-war years, the gusto for life's pleasures displayed by Julia and her husband Paul, and Julia's unlikely television and publishing stardom. My Life in France was a late-life book, a collaboration between Julia and her great-nephew Alex Prud'homme, who wrote down her memories and anecdotes and shaped them into a book. It's episodic and meandering, but often very charming, punctuated with evocative photos by Paul (an accomplished photographer and visual display producer, despite being blind in one eye) and Julia's idiosyncratic exclamations -- 'Whoops! Merde alors! Ouf!'

It's Julia's appetite for life and her determination to wring every ounce of enjoyment from her experiences that makes her such an appealing character. Her classic cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, was a labour of love over many years, and she was convinced (rightly) that American housewives weren't just content to produce over-processed, quick and easy gloop. I'm sure it's no accident that there was a bit of a Julia Child rediscovery during pandemic lockdowns, when we were all trapped inside our own kitchens and with time on our hands to learn how to make bread properly. And now I want to catch up with all the other Julia content I haven't seen yet -- season 2 of the Lancashire show, the film Julie and Julia (tied in with this edition of My Life in France, as the cover attests) and a documentary, also called Julia, on SBS. Bon appetit!

La Vie de Château

My daughter recently returned from a trip to Europe, and one of the gifts she brought me was this slim children's book by Clémence Madeleine-Perdrillat, La Vie de Chateau. Never having studied French at school, I've been plugging away for a couple of years at an online language program, which has enabled me to at least pick out commonly used words from the subtitles of Call My Agent. La Vie de Chateau was just the right level for me, in that I could get the gist of the story pretty easily, while looking up two or three new words per page.

Briefly, eight year old Violette is orphaned and is sent to live with her uncle, who is a cleaner at the Palace of Versailles. At first Violette is miserable and silent, but she gradually warms up to her new home and her uncle -- but now the authorities have decided to send her away... (I think this book is based on a short animated film.)

It's been a long, long time -- so long I literally can't remember -- since I had to work to read a book. I took it one page at a time so I didn't feel overwhelmed. It was frustrating at times. Sometimes I got the translation wildly wrong, sometimes I deciphered it on the first attempt. I was relieved when a big illustration shortened a chunk of text; I gulped when I was confronted with a long slab of words. It's been a really good reminder of just how hard this reading caper can be. But the sense of triumph and satisfaction when I reached the end was absolutely wonderful.

Swann's Way

I was persuaded to give Proust another go on the strength of a rave review by Helen Elliott in the latest edition of The Monthly. I had bought and read (and subsequently lost) part 2 of In Search of Lost Time, Swann in Love -- it must have been about thirty years ago -- and not got much enjoyment out of it. Okay, I thought, maybe I'm mature enough now to get Proust, let's try again.

Swann's Way contains the very first part of the opus, the childhood memories and reflections of Combray (including the famous madeleine scene) as well as Swann in Love. Reader, I must confesss, I only reached the end of Combray before deciding that there are so many other books I would rather have been reading. There are certain activities that I'm still waiting to grow into -- gardening, listening to classical music, and now I have to include reading Proust to this list.

Having said that, I think I did enjoy this attempt more than the first. (Maybe Proust is an acquired taste, like olives and oysters, you just have to keep trying??) Taken in small nibbles, I could relax briefly into his exquisite, meandering, attenuated sentences that can wander over an entire page before gently coming to a halt. And I think I have a better understanding now of his feeling that an ideal image, preserved and relived in memory or constructed in the imagination, is superior to the experience of reality while it is being lived. (I suspect many anxious people would agree.) The descriptions are extraordinarily beautiful, transporting, subtle, and intense -- and yet there is a part of me that yearns for a story, and it's that part of me that refuses to be totally seduced by Proust.

I might give it another ten years and then try again...