Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    My Life in France
    Unavailable
    My Life in France
    Unavailable
    My Life in France
    Audiobook (abridged)5 hours

    My Life in France

    Written by Julia Child and Alex Prud'homme

    Narrated by Flo Salant Greenberg

    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.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateApr 4, 2006
    ISBN9780739325278
    Unavailable
    My Life in France

    Related to My Life in France

    Related audiobooks

    Regional & Ethnic Food For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      French Countryside Cooking

      Sep 28, 2021

      French Countryside Cooking
      2 min read

    • Article

      'The Gourmands' Way' Examines France's Powerful, Ongoing Influence On American Diners

      Oct 13, 2017

      Author Justin Spring offers profiles of six talented American writers who were also gourmands, including the legendary and luminary Julia Child, essayist M.F.K. Fisher, and artist-turned-culinary savant Richard Olney.

      3 min read

    • Article

      Buford Highway

      Nov 24, 2020

      Buford Highway
      6 min read

    • Article

      10 Game-changers

      Jul 30, 2020

      Keshia is on a one-woman mission to challenge the perception of Caribbean food in Britain, and show there’s more to it than jerk chicken. She shares mouth-watering recipes online, some of which feature on the menu of her south London restaurant Carib

      3 min read

    • Article

      Mory Sacko

      May 28, 2021

      Mory Sacko
      1 min read

    • Article

      Mory Sacko

      May 28, 2021

      Mory Sacko
      1 min read

    • Article

      Miami

      Jan 25, 2022

      Miami
      4 min read

    • Article

      Reading and Eating Paris

      Aug 28, 2017

      Reading and Eating Paris
      8 min read

    • Article

      New & Irresistible

      Apr 4, 2023

      New & Irresistible
      3 min read

    • Article

      Culinary Grandes Dames

      Feb 13, 2024

      Culinary Grandes Dames
      3 min read

    • Article

      Frozen Pizza Is the Best Pizza

      Oct 19, 2023

      DEBATES ABOUT PIZZA are a lot like debates about religion, or politics, or monetary policy: There are a lot of strongly held beliefs, but very little is ever truly resolved. Yet if one were to make a list of candidates for the best pizza in New York

      12 min read

    • Article

      Tonight, Let's Go Spanish

      Apr 11, 2024

      Tonight, Let's Go Spanish
      4 min read

    • Article

      Off The Shelf

      Jun 2, 2021

      In a former life, Fiona founded and ran a travel magazine with her husband, so her fiction is based on deep research and intimate knowledge of the setting. In this instance, it’s the region of Champagne and the important role women have played in the

      3 min read

    • Article

      Emma Freud meets Andi Oliver

      Apr 22, 2021

      Andi Oliver is a powerhouse. Host of BBC Two’s Great British Menu, star of BBC Radio 4’s The Kitchen Cabinet and BBC One’s Saturday Kitchen Live, she has now launched Andi’s Wadadli Kitchen – a multi-pronged movement to celebrate Caribbean recipes an

      4 min read

    • Article

      Tropical Son

      Mar 2, 2021

      Tropical Son
      2 min read

    • Article

      Mistress Of The Marché

      Oct 31, 2018

      Mistress Of The Marché
      4 min read

    • Article

      Melissa Thompson The Best Podcasts To Inspire You In The Kitchen

      Aug 27, 2020

      Edna Lewis is not well-known in Britain, but she should be. The award-winning chef, writer and cookbook author elevated the food of the Deep South in the US so that it sat in its rightful place alongside the greatest cuisines of the world. Her legacy

      4 min read

    • Article

      Tonight, Let's Go Spanish

      Feb 13, 2024

      Tonight, Let's Go Spanish
      4 min read

    • Article

      Pacific Pride

      Jan 1, 2020

      Pacific Pride
      6 min read

    • Article

      Off The Shelf

      Nov 1, 2023

      American chef Danielle Alvarez came to Australia in 2016 with a degree in art history and stints at California’s legendary French Laundry and Chez Panisse restaurants under her belt. She added another notch to that list of accomplishments when she he

      2 min read

    • Article

      New & Irresistible

      Feb 13, 2024

      This family-owned restaurant in Lake Charles focuses on delivering traditional Latino dishes and cocktails to the area. Featuring a wide selection of authentic Cuban, Spanish, Venezuelan, and Dominican dishes, its cozy atmosphere is the perfect spot

      3 min read

    Reviews for My Life in France

    4/5

    1,355 ratings123 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 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
      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
      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!
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 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
      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.
    • 4/5
      I find it so interesting that a person who cannot even begin to dream about eating the food described in this book, loves books about food, especially the descriptions of the food, so much. It is true. I really like listening to books where people love food.

      I think that, at heart, Julia Child is a librarian. She does a lot of organizing and categorizing during World War II. She also researches things to death, e.g. mayonnaise, and took a scientific approach to writing her cookbooks.

      The book was interesting, the reader was good (not too breathy or breathless) and it makes me want to buy her cookbook and try making some things.
    • 5/5
      Memoir of Julia Child's time in France and Europe while her husband is in the diplomatic corps. Good stories. Interesting how she came to write cookbooks and have a TV show. Lots of meals with friends both at home and at restaurants.
    • 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 :)
    • 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!
    • 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.
    • 4/5
      As I expected, this was a great book. It has much to offer about Julia Child: her life, stories about food, and much about France. Very enjoyable read.I love Julia Child and want to watch some of her old shows, too. What a personality SHE WAS!!!
    • 4/5
      Julia Child's ebullience, cheer, joi de vivre, comes through clearly in this memoir, as does her love for France and French cuisine. But, that is not all that comes through. Her focus, drive, determination and a tough inner-core are also revealed.I really enjoyed this memoir. It was interesting to read about how she followed her dream to fruition and how she became America's definitive French Chef. Besides, I defy anyone who is old enough to remember her television work not to smile at her cheery "Bon apetite!".
    • 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!
    • 3/5
      I enjoyed discovering about Julia Chilld's love of cooking and her time in France. A must read for all cooking fans.
    • 4/5
      The life of Julia Child was a fascinating one. I thoroughly loved this book and the story of how her career started during her initial time in France. The book was well written and detailed parts of her life that were reconstructed from letters and notes from over the years. Loved seeing into this special person's life and her beautiful approach to the world around her.
    • 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.
    • 4/5
      I hated for this book to end. I felt I was saying goodbye to a good friend. Loved reading about Julia and her passion for learning all she could about true French cooking. What I admired was her love of life, her refusal to give up her dream even when told she would never be a chef......