By: Noel Riley Fitch Publisher: Anchor Average Rating: Binding: Paperback Label: Anchor Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 592 Publication Date: May 04, 1999 Release Date: April 13, 1999
Product Description: Julia Child became a household name when she entered the lives of millions of Americans through our hearts and kitchens. Yet few know the richly varied private life that lies behind this icon, whose statuesque height and warmly enthused warble have become synonymous with the art of cooking.
In this biography we meet the earthy and outrageous Julia, who, at age eighty-five, remains a complex role model. Fitch, who had access to all of Julia's private letters and diaries, takes us through her life, from her exuberant youth as a high-spirited California girl to her years at Smith College, where she was at the center of every prank and party. When most of her girlfriends married, Julia volunteered with the OSS in India and China during World War II, and was an integral part of this elite corps. There she met her future husband, the cosmopolitan Paul Child, who introduced her to the glories of art, fine French cuisine, and love. Theirs was a deeply passionate romance and a modern marriage of equals.
Julia began her culinary training only at the age of thirty-seven at the Cordon Bleu. Later she roamed the food markets of Marseilles, Bonn, and Oslo. She invested ten years of learning and experimentation in what would become her first bestselling classic, Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Now, her career is legend, spanning nearly forty years and still going strong. Generations love the humor and trademark aplomb that have made Julia a household name. Resisting fads and narrow, fanatical conventions of health-consciousness, Julia is the quintessential teacher. The perfect gift for food lovers and a romantic biography of a woman modern before her time, this is a truly American life.
Amazon.com Review: Noel Riley Fitch's savory new biography, Appetite for Life, reveals a woman as appealing as the good food and serious cooking she popularized. As a California girl and Smith College undergraduate, Fitch writes, Julia McWilliams was notable for her high spirits and voracious appetite. Performing intelligence work in Asia during World War II, she met Paul Child, and their marriage of mutual devotion and affection endured until his death in 1994. His postwar assignment took them to France, where she discovered her true calling.
Fitch reminds us that Child championed fresh ingredients at a time when frozen foods and TV dinners dominated American supermarket shelves, and that she demystified haute cuisine with her earthy humor and casual attitude toward mistakes. This affectionate portrait of the remarkable Julia Child reflects her fervent belief that the pleasures of the table are a natural accompaniment to the pleasures of life.
Dreadful (Unlike some reviewers here, I choose to review the book, not its subject.)
There is no reason to read this book. As others have noted, it's chock-full of minutia, based very obviously on letters and diaries. The trouble is that there has been no selection process. Any detail, no matter how slight, is used to pad out this difficult to read book. I'm not talking about the interesting details (such as Julia's facelifts), I'm talking about what so-and-so's husband's uncle majored in at Yale.
Consider this sentence: "Julia bought a new range, an enormous black restaurant range, on which she would cook the remainder of her life, during two months of major renovations on their house at 2706 Olive Street, the last house on Olive before it curved into Twenty-seventh Street at the little green parkway." I love how we start off in Julia's kitchen, meander outside, and by the end, we're a few blocks down the street. Why does Fitch tell us about the little green parkway? For the same reason that a dog licks its balls - because it can.
I was tempted to take notes as I read, citing the howlers and solecisms I found. There are cutesy cliched section headings ("Back Home (and Cooking) on the Range"). There is also a curiously old-fashioned attitude: women are "seduced" into "affairs;" "Negros" and "homosexuals" are described - yet we are also told what "fubar" stands for (f-bomb included). WTF? (Also, someone should teach Fitch that parentheses are an excuse for bad writing.)
I wish I were a better writer so I could adequately describe the badness of this biography. It's merely terrible - not wretched. Save yourselves all a lot of time and simply read "My Life in France," which brings Julia to life on every page, channeled through a skillful ghost-writer. Or "Backstage with Julia," by a long-time associate.
But don't read this book. You will learn nothing interesting - certainly not what made Julia Child so wonderful.
Julia, Julia, Julia ! I recently read "My Life In France" about Julia Child's years in France, her marraige and learning to cook in Paris and the many years of writing her first cookbook. It was so interesting I wanted to know about her and ordered this book. Although there is some repetition it is keeping me thoroughly entertained. I am more than half way through it and keep trying to find time each day to read more. I have been calling my brother (another Julia fan) when I find one of her remarks or something she did that I know he would love to hear about. She is one of the most interesting people of her generation and the current events of that era are brought to life - from the low expectations for women to the McCarthy Witch Hunt to the change in the American lifestyles of a black and white television in the living room and Swanson frozen dinners. She lived a very colorful life and it is greatly detailed in this book. After the first few chapters I also ordered the two volumes she wrote in the 60's - "Mastering The Art of French Cooking". Now I want to find dvd's of her PBS series "Th French Chef" to add to my Julia collection.
If you are a Julia fan, you will love the book and find yourself quoting her as you cook - just make sure there aren't children in the room!
sadly, not well written I love Julia Child, have and use her cookbooks, have read the autobiography/memoir written with her nephew(?) and was thrilled to come upon this book in a local bookstore, marked down to $6 nonetheless...The first paragraph was convoluted and not catchy, but still, anything Julia...
However, you get what you pay for in this case. This has to be one of the sloppier books I've read, it seems to me as if the author got through the first draft, couldn't stand to look at it again, and it was somehow published without ever being edited. It is full of parenthetical asides, long uninteresting descriptions, and flat out mistakes. At one point the author writes how it was easier for the young Julia and her friend to steal cigarettes from a parent than cigars, and says 'therefore they smoked more cigars'. Hmm? I wish it was some statement that they loved the challenge, but it is obviously simply an error.
As a Julia fan, I am reading it just for the info, but I would rather just have the primary source material. One of the wonderful things about biography is that often the author is able to weave the history into the incredible pattern that is the finished life. In this one, the author just seems to be pointing out one thing after the other, giving no weight to anything, and showing no discernment. Disappointing.
If you think this is a well written biography, read Titan. Then compare.
Don't Bother Julia Child was a lovely person with an interesting life but this book as written is unreadable. Poor sentence structure and continual,unecessary use of parenthesis. Try My Life in France. Much better!
Dry, dry, dry.... Someone with such a zest for living deserves a much better biography written about her! Julia Child's life as seen through the words of this author lacks a lot of spice. You trudge through this book rather than read it. It's filled with random asides that distract and detract from the text and really reads more like an obituary than a biography.
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