Return to Paris : A Memoir

The internationally celebrated food writer stimulates all of our sense as she skillfully mixes vibrant memories of her early life in post-World War II Paris, with descriptions of meals that changed her life. In 1947, teenager Colette Rossant was spirited away from safety and comfort of life among her extended family in Cairo, Egypt. She was taken back to Paris by her glamorous but flighty mother to rejoin those family members who had been left behind during the German Occupation. Her mother departed Paris soon after, leaving Rossant alone to contend with a bitter and hostile grandmother. To endure the emotional deprivation and displacement of these years, Rossant threw herself into a precocious and newly discovered love of food and cooking. Her stepfather, a kind-hearted hotelier who came to understand and love Rossant in a way her mother never could manage, took the fledgling young epicure along on his tours scouting the finest chefs in France. this is an exquisitely written exploration of passion in all its textures and manifestations. Bringing to life the ambivalent tenor of postwar France, Colette charts the course of her own fitful march to early independence. Full of mouthwatering descriptions of meals and expertly crafted recipes, this is a delightful fusion of memoir and food writing that brings to mind the best of M.F.K. Fisher and Ruth Reichl.