With the humor of Bridget Jones and the vitality of Augusten Burroughs, Julie
Powell recounts how she conquered every recipe in Julia Child’s Mastering the
Art of French Cooking and saved her soul.
Julie Powell is 30-years-old, living in a rundown apartment in Queens and
working at a soul-sucking secretarial job that’s going nowhere. She needs
something to break the monotony of her life, and she invents a deranged
assignment. She will take her mother's dog-eared copy of Julia Child's 1961
classic Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and she will cook all 524 recipes.
In the span of one year.
At first she thinks it will be easy. But as she moves from the simple Potage
Parmentier (potato soup) into the more complicated realm of aspics and crépes,
she realizes there’s more to Mastering the Art of French Cooking than meets the
eye. With Julia’s stern warble always in her ear, Julie haunts the local
butcher, buying kidneys and sweetbreads. She sends her husband on late-night
runs for yet more butter and rarely serves dinner before midnight. She discovers
how to mold the perfect Orange Bavarian, the trick to extracting marrow from
bone, and the intense pleasure of eating liver.
And somewhere along the line she realizes she has turned her kitchen into a
miracle of creation and cuisine. She has eclipsed her life’s ordinariness
through spectacular humor, hysteria, and perseverance.
BOOK REVIEWS
BookBrowse
If you're a keen home cook or a fan of memoirs, real or fictionalized, such as Bridget Jones, this is one for you; and with the holiday season coming up dangerously soon, you might also want to keep a note of Julie & Julia as a potential gift item for a domesticated relative - perhaps paired with Julia Child's autobiography My Life In France (with the caveat that Julia Child, who died while Julie was working her way through The Art of French Cookery, wasn't a fan of Julie or her project!) Full Review (304 words).
Media Reviews
Publishers Weekly
Both home cooks and devotees of Bridget Jones-style dishing will be caught up in Powell's funny, sharp-tongued but generous writing.
Kirkus Reviews
Powell is a softy at heart, appreciating Child because, she says, Child "wants you to remember that you are human, and as such are entitled to that most basic of human rights, the right to eat well and enjoy life." Powell clearly enjoyed hers, with all its madness and pleasures.
Booklist - Vanessa Bush
Hilarious. Powell discovers incredible determination and hidden talents in cooking, writing and living. This is a joyful, humorous account of one woman's efforts to find meaning in her life.
TIME Magazine
Powell is not a domestic goddess; she's emphatically, unembarrassedly a domestic mortal. But she is also a genuinely gifted thinker and writer about food. As we learn in the account of her culinary marathon, Child's gastronomical masterpiece teaches Powell precious lessons about herself.
Ann Beattie Julie and Julia has all the ingredients of a tasty novel: it's
original, funny, and slyly provocative. I also learned a lot, and I will channel
Paul Child when I renovate my kitchen.
Mario Batali, cookbook author and 2005 James Beard Awards' Outstanding Chef of The Year.
Julie Powell's homage to Julia is inspiring, poignant and engaging. A
magnificent introduction into the lives of two very interesting women.
Elizabeth Gilbert, author of The Last American Man
A feast, a voyage and a marvel. Julie Powell writes about cooking the
way it always needed to be written about - in big, buttery, honest and lusty,
gravy-dripping-down-your-chin gulps of rhapsody.
Recent Reader Reviews
Rated of 5
by coolcookie Julie & Julia This book is boring!!! its like reading a cookery book from start to finish zzzz. And I like cooking!
Still reading it, have skipped lots of bits throughout. Can't wait to be finished with it. Maybe a good book for some people but not me!...
Rated of 5
by Geraldine Exhausted of Julie, curious of Julia This book was picked for my book club and as the film had already been released I think we were influenced by Meryl Streep on the cover. I digress,I found this book very difficult.. Julie Powell is so self absorbed and moany. she tries far too hard... Read More
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War, natural disaster, reckless gods and the recognition of impermanence in the world are just some of the threads that AS Byatt weaves into this most timely of books. Linguistically stunning and imaginatively abundant, this is a landmark.
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Brilliantly evoking the long-vanished world of masters and servants, Margaret Powell's classic memoir of her time in service is the remarkable true story of an indomitable woman who, though she served in the great houses of England, never stopped aiming high.
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After hearing the interview on NPR with the author, Ayad Akhtar, I was intrigued.
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(304 words).
Ann Beattie
of 5
by coolcookie
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