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We've Always Had Paris...and Provence: A Scrapbook of Our Life in France
| Our Price |
$ 14.07
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| Retail Value |
$ 15.99 |
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| You Save |
$ 1.92 (12%) |
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| Item Number |
2482771 |
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Item Description...
Overview
The French food-expert author of Vegetable Harvest and her husband present a memoir in two voices about their culinary experiences in France, in an anecdotal scrapbook that is complemented by favorite recipes that celebrate memorable aspects of their life together. Reprint.
Publishers Description
For more than a quarter century, Patricia Wells, who has long been recognized as the leading American authority on French food, and her husband, Walter, have lived the life in France that many of us have often fantasized about. In this delightful memoir they share in two voices their experiences—the good, the bad, and the funny—offering a charming and evocative account of their beloved home and some of the wonderful people they have met along the way. |
Item Specifications...
Pages 313
Dimensions: Length: 0.75" Width: 6" Height: 9"
Weight: 0.85 lbs.
Binding Softcover
Release Date May 1, 2009
ISBN 0060898585
EAN 9780060898588
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Availability 4 units.
Availability accurate as of May 26, 2012 09:07.
Usually ships within one to two business days from La Vergne, TN.
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Reviews - What do our customers think?
 | A must for all Francophiles and foodies Sep 26, 2009 |
| Patricia and Walter Wells' memoir of their life in France is absolutely fascinating. It's subtitle is A scrapbook of Our life in France which is an apt description. While it is a memoir, how they met, how they got into journalism, how they moved to France etc etc , it is also an interesting look at French culture through their eyes. There's a great chapter on Patricia's driving and her license test, another neat one describing her TV appearance on Apostrophe and a particularly interesting chapter about how she wound up transforming her appearance by living in France. What makes this book a bit more appealing is that each chapter, centered on one theme, is written both by Patricia and her husband so you get two viewpoints on the same theme or two takes on something that happened in their life. And,as always,there's a recipe added with some particular connection to the chapter. A wonderful read! | | |  | Not enough (written for BookPleasures.com) Aug 20, 2009 |
How many of us have dreamed of chucking it all and moving to an exotic local? Most of us have and I must admit, my dream was Paris. Having gone there when I was twenty, I began a love affair with this wonderful city that continues to this day. So, of course, when I heard about We've Always had Paris, I had to review it.
Patricia and Walter Wells understand the yearning of us Parisophiles. They often talked about the chance of moving to Paris to live. Both were writers for the Times and they dreamed of the day the call would come in offering a job at the Paris branch of the Times, the International Herald Tribune. One day, the dream became reality and they packed up and moved.
Now they had to face the reality of living where they didn't speak the language and were strangers in a world so different it was almost alien. Add to that Walter's 24 hour a day job and Patricia's freelance and cookbook career and they were almost overwhelmed. However, they find their way in the strange new world of both Paris and Provence and the book is filled with their memories, experiences, and meals.
I began this book with high hopes and found myself slightly disappointed. The tale is very well written and chocked full of tales and recipes, but it lacks lustre. The descriptions of Paris failed to evoke the wonderful sense of the city itself and felt as flat as the pages of the book. When I read a book about a foreign country, I want to get lost in the place and the people and I was sad when these book almost but didn't quite succeed.
The part about Provence also didn't evoke the sense of place and time. Having never been there, I had hoped for a tale filled with the magic of that unique part of the country. I was looking forward to seeing and experiencing in my mind a trip to this area and I didn't find it. The story was well told and filled with those unique experiences of French country living, but I failed to make that vital connection with both the place and the characters.
There can be no doubt that these two writers are very talented at writing factual information and they created technically sound book, but without the magic of the place shining through the book falters.
| | |  | Light-hearted, easily-read memoir Jul 31, 2009 |
| Walter and Patricia comment on their lives and adventures in Paris and at their farm in Provence. It begins with their newspaper and writing careers and much later forays into Patricia's well-known culinary expertise, though food is clearly a theme throughout. I didn't think it was the best-written memoir (though, who am I to speak?), but it nevertheless captivates. Surprisingly, Patricia's interlude with marathons was inspiring - a topic I couldn't have guessed would grab my heart and interest. | | |  | did they ever have paris and provence? Jul 25, 2009 |
| Having lived in France for 15 years, most of them spent in Paris, I found it challenging to connect to anything Patricia and Walter Wells had to say about their experience there. One of the first words in the volume is FANTASY. The story told in this book, feels steeped in it. Not that the Wells' did not experience what they state they did. I think it's the cloying, uninteresting and banal manner in which the story is told, rendering what I feel must have been an extraordinary journey, into a bundle of really very tired cliches. Although I am always interested in seeing what Ms Wells will come up with next, I have never been a fan of her sacherine writing style. When I read her, I feel as though I'm reading the work of a very inteligent but calculated woman who has never been able to divorce herself from her little girl fantasy of actually having moved to France. Her writing still has a contrived 'outsiders' feel to it. This does not in any way detract from her love of food, French or otherwise, nor her capacity to prepare it, nor her tirless efforts to successfully create her French dream. Disneyworld was never my idea of a very French place to go in France. I feel vaguely the same way about Patricia Wells take on her adopted France. It always feels to be more a projection of what she needs and wants it to be, than of what it actually is. Hers is not at all a France I would like to spend time in. | | |  | I lost interest in it and started searching out the recipes Nov 18, 2008 |
| Patricia and Walter Wells are not Julia and Paul Child! I must have imagined they were, because this little tome was a big disappointment for me. In the end they seem primarily a pair of very fortunate, albeit talented and ambitious, yuppies. An awful lot of self-satisfaction to plow through! Could've really lived without the details of Patricia's beauty routine! | | | Write your own review about We've Always Had Paris...and Provence: A Scrapbook of Our Life in France
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