Love, Laughter, and Tears in Paris at the World's Most Famous Cooking School
Starred review from October 1, 2007
Flinn's engaging account of her studies at famed French cooking school Le Cordon Bleu should strike a chord with anyone who has dreamed of leaving the rat race and following a passion for food. The main course, Flinn's narrative of her trials and triumphs as she moves through the three levels of cuisine, is supplemented by plentiful helpings of drama, romance and near-tragedy in her personal life. Cassandra Campbell's reading is superlative: her American accent for Flinn slides gracefully into French, French-accented English and various accents for other international students. Her voice also exactly captures Flinn's shifting emotions, from fear and paralysis when facing the "Gray Chef" and resentment of selfish classmates, to pleasure when she wins praise for a well-prepared sauce and joy when she realizes she is starting to understand French better. Foodies and memoir fans will be enchanted. Each chapter ends with a recipe (which all helpfully appear in PDF on a separate disc). Simultaneous release with the Viking hardcover (Reviews, June 25).
June 25, 2007
When the author, an American journalist and software executive working in London, is sacked from her high-powered job, she enrolls as a student at the Cordon Bleu school in Paris. With limited cooking skills and grasp of the French language, she gamely attempts to master the school's challenging curriculum of traditional French cuisine. As if she didn't have enough on her plate eviscerating fish and knocking out pâté à choux, she determines to write a book about her experience and gets married along the way. The result is a readable if sentimental chronicle of that year in Paris in which her love life is explored in great detail, dirty weekends and all, and cooking features as a metaphor for self-discovery. Some readers may feel disappointed that the narrator's encounters with French cookery remain largely confined to her lessons at the Cordon Bleu. On those rare occasions when she ventures into the food-obsessed city, the descriptions of meals are glancing at best. Although her struggles with the language and lack of knowledge about the culture lend comic elements to the story (once, trying to order a pizza over the phone, she said, “Je suis une pizzaâ€â€”I am a pizza), they, too, constrain the author's culinary explorations.