On Rue Tatin: The Simple Pleasures of Life in a Small French Town - Bookshop - France

On Rue Tatin: The Simple Pleasures of Life in a Small French Town

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For an expat chef to live on a French street named after a recipe is almost beyond belief. Yet On rue Tatin is so inviting the that the book's recipes are only incidental to Susan Loomis's stories about living in France.

Setting up house in a foreign country is a genre that draws any reader who relishes the struggles from arm's length. It would be a shame, though, to limit Loomis's audience to Francophiles and food freaks. Many of the vignettes are beautifully crafted. Her story begins when she lands a job as food writer Patricia Wells's assistant and jumps through years and layers of life as she and her architect husband DIY a house--a small 15th century convent--in a village in Normandy. There are problems, as anyone who has crossed the channel in pursuit of a home can attest, put succinctly by a Parisian friend.

"You must understand, it's normal," he said. "You've arrived here like a cheveu dans la soupe--a hair in the soup. No-one asked you to come. And, you're American." Through chapters on her brushes with the laws, the priest, the rug salesman and neighbours, there is a sense of honesty in the writing. The French are not all good or all bad, and neither is she. The transition from foreigner to American to Joe and Fiona's (her children) mere, is gradual and poetic in its lack of a defining moment. Food, though, is very important at opening more than one French door. The recipes that accompany each chapter are varied in taste and in difficulty. And anyone thinking of buying a "serious" cooker must read the chapter "La Gazinière: The Stove". Naturally, she ends the book with a recipe for Tarte Tatin. --Kathleen Buckley

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