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Title details for Dearie by Bob Spitz - Available

Dearie

The Remarkable Life of Julia Child

by Bob Spitz
Kimberly Farr
Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
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1 of 1 copy available
It’s rare for someone to emerge in America who can change our attitudes, our beliefs, and our very culture. It’s even rarer when that someone is a middle-aged, six-foot three-inch woman whose first exposure to an unsuspecting public is cooking an omelet on a hot plate on a local TV station.  And yet, that’s exactly what Julia Child did.  The warble-voiced doyenne of television cookery became an iconic cult figure and joyous rule-breaker as she touched off the food revolution that has gripped America for more than fifty years.
Now, in Bob Spitz’s definitive, wonderfully affectionate biography, the Julia we know and love comes vividly — and surprisingly — to life.  In Dearie, Spitz employs the same skill he brought to his best-selling, critically acclaimed book The Beatles, providing a clear-eyed portrait of one of the most fascinating and influential Americans of our time — a woman known to all, yet known by only a few.
At its heart, Dearie is a story about a woman’s search for her own unique expression.  Julia Child was a directionless, gawky young woman who ran off halfway around the world to join a spy agency during World War II.  She eventually settled in Paris, where she learned to cook and collaborated on the writing of what would become Mastering the Art of French Cooking, a book that changed the food culture of America.   She was already fifty when The French Chef went on the air —  at a time in our history when women weren’t making those leaps.  Julia became the first educational TV star, virtually launching PBS as we know it today; her marriage to Paul Child formed a decades-long love story that was romantic, touching, and quite extraordinary.
A fearless, ambitious, supremely confident woman, Julia took on all the pretensions that embellished tony French cuisine and fricasseed them to a fare-thee-well, paving the way for everything that has happened since in American cooking, from TV dinners and Big Macs to sea urchin foam and the Food Channel.  Julia Child’s story, however, is more than the tale of a talented woman and her sumptuous craft.  It is also a saga of America’s coming of age and growing sophistication, from the Depression Era to the turbulent sixties and the excesses of the eighties to the greening of the American kitchen.  Julia had an effect on and was equally affected by the baby boom, the sexual revolution, and the start of the women’s liberation movement.
On the centenary of her birth, Julia finally gets the biography she richly deserves.  An in-depth, intimate narrative, full of fresh information and insights, Dearie is an entertaining, all-out adventure story of one of our most fascinating and beloved figures.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Awards

  • Release date

    August 7, 2012

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9780449012901
      • File size: 734519 KB
      • Duration: 25:30:14

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Many of today's master chefs can trace their enchantment with the culinary arts to the iconic Julia Child--and her liberating pronouncement that fresh, wholesome fine dining can and should be crafted at home. Spitz's biography captures the lively spirit and ancestral origins of a woman who transformed kitchen drudgery into enlightened American meals. Kimberly Farr has the sense to stop just short of Julia's distinctive high-pitched warble. Her expressive performance intuitively communicates Spitz's anecdotes about this Òculinary messiah's . . . axis of fun,Ó particularly her mischievous nature. Farr delivers reminiscences of those who knew and loved Julia with affection. Under Julia's often hilarious tutelage, food prep and feasting evolved from sustenance to pleasure--ushering in the Òupheaval in the cultural paradigmÓ that is prominent globally today. A.W. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2012, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from July 9, 2012
      On November 3, 1948, a lunch in a Paris restaurant of sole meunière, the sole so very fresh with its delicate texture and cooked like an omelet in nothing but a bath of clarified butter, changed Julia Child’s life. In that moment, Child (1912–2004) recognized and embraced food as her calling, setting out initially to learn the finer points of cooking, and French cooking in particular. In this affectionate and entertaining tribute to the witty, down-to-earth, bumptious, and passionate host of The French Chef, Spitz (The Beatles) exhaustively chronicles Child’s life and career from her childhood in California through her social butterfly flitting at Smith and her work for a Pasadena department store to her stint in government service, her marriage to Paul Child, and her rise to become America’s food darling with the publication of Mastering the Art of French Cooking and her many television shows. In spite of her miserable failures in her early attempts to prepare food for her husband, a determined Child enrolled in courses at the renowned French cooking school, Le Cordon Bleu, where she mastered everything from sauces to soufflés. Spitz reminds us that Child had always possessed a tremendous amount of excess energy with no outlet for expressing it. With the publication of her cookbook and the subsequent television shows, she discovered the place where she could use her cooking skills, her force of personality, and her abundant charm. Released to coincide with Child’s centenary, Spitz’s delightful biography succeeds in being as big as its subject. Agent: Sloan Harris, ICM.

    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from November 26, 2012
      Spitz delivers a deep, thoroughly researched, fun, and amusing biography of legendary chef Julia Child. Interweaving anecdotes, family history, and historical events, he tells the tale of Child’s remarkable life, covering highlights from her espionage work during WWII to her rise to prominence as a television personality and everything in between. Narrator Kimberly Farr executes this audio edition expertly. Her reading is lively and engaging and infuses Spitz’s work with energy and emotion. Perhaps most delightful is the voice Farr creates for Child. While not truly mimicking the famous cook, she deftly reproduces Child’s style of speaking, prolonging words, shifting emphasis—all with that famous light, bubbly delivery. Fans of Child, cooking, and history will find this audiobook a very enjoyable listen. A Knopf hardcover.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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