Madame Proust and the Kosher Kitchen

by KateTaylor (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2004

  $4.63

  Marie Prevost is a contemporary Canadian who sets off for Paris to research Proust and escape a failed romance. Sarah Bensimon is a young Parisian Jew who marries into an orthodox family and takes refuge in her kitchen, recreating a kosher version of classic French cuisine. The third woman is madame Jeanne Proust herself, fragments of whose 'diaries' are recreated with impeccably researched detail - as she worries about Marcel, his late-night habits, his diet and his unsuitable friends. All these strands are brought poignantly together - the new world and the old, the Seine and the St Lawrence, mothers and sons, outsiders and insiders - in this intelligent and beautifully judged debut novel.

• Used

  Hardcover
  2003

  $3.27

  The story of three women, whose lives criss-cross between Paris in the 1890s, at the height of the Dreyfus affair, France again in 1941 and Canada today. The first-person narrator, a contemporary Canadian simultaneous translator, goes to Paris to research Proust and escape an unrequited love, and finds instead Mme Proust's 'unpublished diary' in the archives. Then there is Sarah, a Jewish French girl whose parents send her out of Paris in WWII to escape the round-ups; she ends up in Canada and never sees them again. She marries into an orthodox Jewish family and becomes more kosher than they are, constantly consoling herself with cooking - and we finally discover that it's her son with whom our narrator is unrequitedly in love...and he's gay. The third woman is Mme Proust herself, whose 'diaries' are fictionalised in a wonderful pastiche by Taylor, with irresistible and impecccably researched details of the mother's worries about Marcel, his late-night habits, his diet and his friends, and about the Dreyfus affair - being Jewish though completely assimilated she observes it with very different eyes from her husband's. Everything comes together poignantly and satisfyingly: the new world and the old, the Seine and the St Lawrence, mothers and sons, outsiders both Jewish and homosexual, and finally redemption through literature and cooking.

• New

  Paperback
  2004

  $12.40

  Marie Prevost is a contemporary Canadian who sets off for Paris to research Proust and escape a failed romance. Sarah Bensimon is a young Parisian Jew who marries into an orthodox family and takes refuge in her kitchen, recreating a kosher version of classic French cuisine. The third woman is madame Jeanne Proust herself, fragments of whose 'diaries' are recreated with impeccably researched detail - as she worries about Marcel, his late-night habits, his diet and his unsuitable friends. All these strands are brought poignantly together - the new world and the old, the Seine and the St Lawrence, mothers and sons, outsiders and insiders - in this intelligent and beautifully judged debut novel.