Lunch in Paris: Elizabeth Bard

In this memoir with food, Elizabeth Bard recounts being a lost, educated, cultured twenty-something from a reasonably economic upper middle class family who fell in love with a Frenchman over lunch in Paris, moved there to be with him, felt lost in the culture and her own lack of direction in life, married the Frenchman, carried on being lost, and apparently found herself through French ways of doing food and writing about the French ways of doing food, and whilst doing so adapted to the French way of life in ways that set her apart from her Americaness and American friends while embracing France and the French culture.

I just don't know where to start with this one. I should say up front that overall I enjoyed the book: it was well-written and clever, but there was something deeply, deeply privileged and even a little snotty about it at times (and I should caveat strongly that there were plenty of times when she would make a statement - particularly in regards to being an academic, which she was before the whole food and writing thing took off - with which I could completely identify, so please lump me there too then.) When I checked some of the listings in the back, I wasn't surprised to find Eat, Pray, Love listed amongst the author's inspirations, so if you were one of the many people who found that book deeply offensive/annoying/privileged, I'd suspect you may find similar veins in Lunch in Paris. (For good critique and counter-critique of the Gilbert book, try Bitch Magazine and The Awl. See you in a few hours and have fun!)

There were parts that made me cringe with their implied superiority, like when the author received recipes from her American friends as a part of a wedding shower. One friend included her grandmother's recipes for sugar cookies along with cookie cutters that represented moments from their deep, long friendship, and whilst the author was clearly moved by the gift she also admitted to thinking to herself, "But the French don't eat cookies." (To which I thought: Who the f*** cares? You're not French, just marrying one. Bake them for yourself and your family and whoever wants to eat them.) That moment set off this realization that she was moving on into a different stage and a different state, something that was going to be so different that the people that she'd known in America were no longer going to recognize her. This is fair enough since lots of people have those moments at pivotal junctures in their lives. But what made me uncomfortable here was the implication that she was moving on to something better, moving beyond the spectrum of the people who cared about her into something better. Because it was France.

Conversely there were moments when I cringed on behalf of the author in a completely sympathetic way, like when she realized that every single person in a room thought she was borderline obese. The author had mentioned at least once or twice (seriously, maybe three or four times: it was a theme) that she was five foot seven and a slim size ten (I don't know if that's US or UK sizing but since this is a UK publication I want to assume UK sizing, and a UK 10 is roughly a US 6), but when she made the "mistake" of taking a normal slice of a cake instead of a small one, it was as if she'd asked for the head of a nearby puppy. People - and these were friends of her in-laws with whom her French family was staying on holiday, mind, not strangers - stared, warned her that it was very rich, and more or less politely bullied her into having a small piece.

It took me years to understand exactly what had happened that night. To understand why it wasn't meant to be mean or humiliating, even though it was. Simply put, in France, eating is a social activity, and it is socially unacceptable to be heavy. To them, my American body was already on the verge of being overweight, and naturally, in the French way, I would want to watch myself. I'm sure nobody, not even Marie-Chantal [who was slicing and serving the cake], thought I should deny myself dessert. But surely, I wouldn't want to overdo it. I wouldn't want to be greedy.

This made me so angry, and not at the author, but at the shaming and lack of acceptance of someone who's meant to be your friend, your family. Again...eat the damn cake.

[I interrupt here to speak for myself, as a person who has also settled in a country not of my birth, upbringing or heritage. I understand adaptation, I understand learning the ways of a new culture and doing so not simply to fit in but in order to adapt to a new way of life. I get it. But in my infinite wisdom (ha!) and also through the peculiarity and luxury of being slightly older the author when I settled in a new country I have learned the value of choosing when not to participate in a system which is not your own. If I had decided to adapt wholly to this culture and participate in its systems, I never would have access to books, places, and people that I need for my degree by virtue of the fact that 1. I am not a man and, to a lesser degree, 2. I am not upper class. (I won't even go into the tweed, though I do love a good tweed.) There is a definite value to working outside the system, and maybe I at thirty-one had a stronger sense of self upon moving to a new culture than the author did in her mid-twenties. She wouldn't be the first person in her mid-twenties to not have a firm sense of self. But still I say: eat the damn cake.]

The author's exploits with food, in learning new ways and new dishes, were by and large fun to read about. I particularly enjoyed her first attempt at mackerel, which says a lot about her in a positive way:

When I got home, I took the first mackerel out of the bag. His skin was slick and iridescent, with black spots that fanned out in a pattern on either side. This would make a nice handbag, I thought, as I lost my grip and he fell into the sink. Slippery little bugger.

I got a hold of him again and put him on a plate. I knew there were things I had to do to him. Dirty, violent things. I thought about all the things I knew something about - eighteenth-century bookbinding, Victorian photography, Renaissance painting. Somehow I had missed this particular skill on my carefully groomed resume.

Yeah, me too. I still ask the fishmonger to do all that nasty stuff to fish, so complete props to her on this one. We like mackerel in this household, so I'm keen to try the recipe that she included for that one, along with a few choice others.

Ultimately, the problem is that I just don't know where to land with this book. It was engaging, it was easy to read, and it was by turns interesting and annoying. With recipes. I enjoyed it but still found it problematic. So I have to go back to my original thought: if you had any issues whatsoever with Eat, Pray, Love, you should probably avoid this.