Customer Reviews

Appetite for Life

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Julia Child as a personality has long been melded with Julia Child, the cook. I watched her shows in the sixties as a child having little interest in the kitchen, but simply finding her fascinating to watch! 'The French Chef', unlike the Galloping Gourmet and others, has aged well and can still be watched with enjoyment. Why? Because Julia Child was always herself on TV, never pandering to the transient and fickle tastes of the times.

Watching Julia's various series, I learned some about her life, but eagerly purchased this book when it first appeared. Unlike some other reviewers, I delighted in this auther's literary painting of the times in which Julia has lived. To me, nothing is more disappointing in a biography than the feeling that something has been left out!

This book demonstrates that though her name to the public has been made by her cooking career, Julia Child is much, much more. For those who enjoy reading biographies, this will provide enjoyment regardless of whether they like cooking or not!

As a great American icon, Julia Child deserves a great biography, but if this book is any indication, she may have to write her own. Although the book provides a lot of interesting detail, the author often fails to thread them into any cohesive fashion, and page after page is factoid upon factoid with no apparent organizing principle. Also far too much time is spent tediously detailing the guest lists for dozens of Child dinner parties, making much of the book sound like one of those dreadful society columns filled with the names of party goers and their various social and educational connections. This is what happens when an author, working off of the papers of her subject, is unable to rise above the reportage level to separate the wheat from the chaff.

I'll give the author credit for doing a lot of research and providing an intimate glimpse at the Child marriage and the interesting figure of Paul Child himself. It also does a good job of taking us through the painstaking 9-year process of writing and rewriting "Mastering the Art of French Cooking". But as for a well-organized transcendant portrait of Julia herself, this one is missing the touch of a master.

My husband and I listened to this book on tape (Blackstone Audio). We both loved it, and couldn't wait to get home each evening to hear the next tape in the 16-tape series. Neither of us knew much about Julia Child previously, and we are both very grateful to have 'Appetite for Life' open our eyes to a truly inspirational American. Julia can look for us in one of those long, long lines of adoring fans at her next book signing.

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.

I've read the reviews & am sorry there were so many negitive ones.
The biggest complaint seems to be that the book is poorly written.
(Well... I for one do NOT have a problem with parenthetical expression. In fact, I am a proponent & an advocate of this handy device. I am, not only, a continual, continuous , constant , incessant, perpetual & perennial PRACTIONER.....I bought the company!) But I digress.

Anyway, I've read two other books about J.C.(My Life in France and Backstage with Julia) and THIS one was my favorite. The backstage book focused on the author & didn't appeal to me.(However, it WAS useful for the last stages of Julia's life & her death, as the big book was written some years before Julia's death.)

My Life in France is a lovely book but glosses over some of the "warts" in Julia's life.

No, this biography is the one I'm adding to my bookshelf. (And being from Pasadena myself I loved the neighborhood details & could picture EXACTLY where she lived & played as a child).

Incidentally, I ran into Julia a couple of times. Once here is Pasadena at the local cookware shop and again, years later, at the farmer's market in Santa Barbara. She was a cooking icon and an amazing woman.

One question: Why is reviewer Mark Wilden from Frisco SO HOSTILE??
People can check out this book from their local library
& it won't cost them nothin' but a little time.
By the way, Mark, anyone who likes Bluegrass is OK by me.

I read this book immediately after reading a recent biography of James Beard. Before having read both books, I was sure Beard was deservedly at the pinnacle of American culinary expertise and influence. I now believe that position belongs to Julia Child, who, with her two French colaborators, was almost entirely responsible for the text of their books, unlike Beard, who employed a sizeable number of ghost writers in much the same way that 'Martha Stewart' is more of a brand for a team effort than itis the identity of a single worker. At the same time, one can easily trace the rebirth of interest in things culinary by the conjunction of Childs books and early PBS shows with the advent of the Kennedy White House French Chef hired by Jackie Kennedy. I also have an enormous respect for Child in comparison to Beard for scrupulously avoiding product endorsements and other commercial entanglements.

I know this book was written without the active cooperation of Ms. Child, and I believe it shows. The author had access to all of Child's papers and correspondence and, I'm sure, interviewed a large number of Child's friends and colleagues. This makes me yearn to read Julia's own memoir. Until that is available, this will do just fine.

Julia Child's recent death prompted me to read this biography of her written in 1997. I'm glad I did but it took a monumental effort to get through it.

Noel Riley Fitch has given us as comprehensive a look into the life of the wonderful Julia Child as an author ever could with a subject. The reader knows more about the interaction of the cadre of people that filled Julia Child's life than one could ever imagine. Therein, however, lies the problem. This book is more an expanded diary than it is a readable and useful offering.
One can't possibly keep up with the dozens of names bandied about and the end result is an olio of confusion. What bothers me most about this biography is that it reflects not much warmth of Julia Child, herself. There are some funny paragraphs (especially those describing what her voice sounds like) but this book is as dry as a Thanksgiving turkey without the gravy. I do, however give Ms. Fitch credit on one important account....she wonderfully relates the marriage of Paul and Julia Child.... a marriage of partnership and deep love. I only wish that the rest of the book could have been written so lovingly.

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!

I bought this book after seeing the movie Julie and Julia a couple of weeks ago. I really didn't know much about Julia and Paul Child - who were indeed a team as this bio points out - until reading Fitch's book. Her writing is excellent, and I'd rather know too much than too little about a subject. I just cannot understand any of the bad reviews of this book that have been written.

I have also read "Julie and Julia", which I didn't quite care for. I still have the third book, Julia Child's own "My Life in France" next up on my reading table. But to get back to Fitch's book, which ends before Child's death in 2004, it is a complete biography of all of Child's life up to the point it was written. Fitch incorporates most of Julia'a (and Paul's) family and friends and makes special mention of their WW2 duties in the OSS in Ceylon and China. Most of all, the reader can "see" how Julia McWilliams and Paul Child fell in love and created "Julia Child".

Fitch's work is a good addendum to the movie Julie and Julia.

I'm only on page 30 of this biography, and I've already found a number of small, but annoying errors--annoying to me because I live within five miles of Pasadena, California, where Julia Child grew up. For example: Fitch writes of the "snow-capped San Gabriel Mountains." They are almost never capped with snow. She misspells Fremont Street as Freemont. She says that Neighborhood Church no longer exists. It does. All that leads me to believe that I will surely find other mistakes that reflect a lack of thorough research. Also, Fitch's style is somewhat disjointed, with a certain lack of cohesiveness. I will, nevertheless, probably read the book to the end because Julia Child somehow manages to shine through the sometimes sloppy writing.