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• Title: A Pig in Provence: Good Food and Simple Pleasures in the South of France
• Author: Georgeanne Brennan
• Publisher: Harcourt Books
• Year of Publication: 2008
• Pages: 209

When I went to Paris for a week in 2007, I had difficulty finding any restaurant that served Provençal food. But even if I had been successful, I would have had trouble figuring out how to pay for it. Money was tight, but I managed. So regrettably, I left France without ever having tried rustic French food. Instead, we ate Chinese food, Italian food, German food, lots of crepes, baguettes, and croissants. Everything was delicious, but nothing was Provençal.

Reading Georgeanne Brennan’s A Pig in Provence was like taking a trip to the South of France without ever boarding a plane. The book is separated into eight chapters, each with a related recipe at the end. Brennan and her first husband moved to the South of France in the 1970s, intent on raising goats and making homemade goat cheese for income. They were both graduate students from California, making the move with their baby in tow. They managed to make not just money from their goat cheese, but friends as well.

Most of the chapters are about how and what Brennan learned about food from her friends in Provence. Whether it was the real way to make bouillabaisse (fish soup), pistou (French pesto), aioli (garlic mayonnaise), or tomato tarts, it all revolved around tradition, local ingredients, and community.

Though A Pig in Provence is Brennan’s personal story of her experiences in Provence, she managed to make it much less about her and much more about the place. Her descriptions and explanations were wonderful and complete. The only things I was left wondering about were questions about her personal life she never explained, and that’s quite alright.

Last night we tried one of the recipes: An Aioli Feast. We boiled potatoes, carrots, beets, green beans, a few eggs, and poached some salmon. Then we crushed four cloves of garlic and sea salt with a pestle in a mortar, mixed in three egg yolks, and added a cup of olive oil very slowly. To eat, we dipped all of our food in our aioli, including a baguette from the store. It was simple and delicious! 4.5/5

• Title: Queen of Fashion
• Author: Caroline Weber
• Publisher: Picador
• Year of Publication: 2006
• Pages: 292 (with notes, 372)

As my book review on French Milk gives some indication, I’m a bit of a Francophile. It all started sometime around the opening of Sophia Coppola’s film Marie Antoinette (2006), inspired by Antonia Fraser’s biography Marie Antoinette: The Journey (2001). I loved the film, and my interest in Marie Antoinette intensified when I visited Versailles in the summer of 2007.

There is something about monarchies that I find absolutely enchanting: the history, the genealogy, the societal pressures, the mores, the architecture of their abodes, the luxury. This extends even to the British monarchy. I am also mesmerized by anything about Queen Elizabeth I and the rest of the Tudors. (This interest was cultivated long before my interest in Marie Antoinette.)

Perhaps my interest in these infamous queens has something to do with the fact that so much was expected of them and yet they faced great obstacles in achieving anything because they were women of their time.

Caroline Weber’s fantastic biography of Marie Antoinette, Queen of Fashion, approaches the subject in a refreshing way. Pointing out the intentional and unintentional symbolism in the styles and colors of the clothing the French queen chose to wear provided another dimension to the story of her life. In the introduction Weber provides, she explains that this biography was meant to fill in the gaps that other biographers left out. Since clothing was such an integral part of Marie Antoinette’s life, to tell her story without a detailed account of what she wore and why ignored an entire facet of her existence.

Weber doesn’t just talk about the clothes Marie Antoinette wore, but also her life, the trends of the day, her influence on French style, the symbolism of the clothes her countrymen wore in revolt, and the French Revolution’s influence on fashion.

All in all, I felt even more sympathy for Marie Antoinette as a human being after reading this book. The first time I ever heard of her, likely in elementary school, was of her allegedly saying “Let them eat cake!” in response to news of starvation, extreme poverty, and famine in France. (That was discovered to be a false accusation.) This book and the aforementioned movie paint pictures of a Marie Antoinette who was not perfect, but certainly did not deserve to be maltreated and executed. They illustrate a complex and nuanced view of the life she led, and how much she really was a victim of circumstance. 5/5

• Title: French Milk
• Author: Lucy Knisley
• Publisher: Touchstone
• Year of Publication: 2007
• Pages: 193

French Milk is a graphic novel about a 22 year-old New York girl (the author) and her trip to Paris for five weeks with her mother. This graphic novel is styled as a diary, with fantastic visuals and occasional photographs of the real thing.

I approached this book with a bias. I took a trip to Paris when I was 22 years-old, too. The trip included a stop in London for five days, a ride on the EuroStar to France, and a week in Paris. It was an amazing experience, and I want to go back.

Reading French Milk helped me remember the little things I loved and the excitement of Paris. The food, the art, the culture was refreshed in my memory because of this book.

The author’s personal style didn’t hurt, either. Her diary was open, honest, and was successful in making me care about her characters.

The only complaint I had with this book was that the structure was difficult to adapt to at first. I was expecting French Milk to resemble the comics the author posts on her journal, something akin to Persepolis, the only other graphic novel (series) I’ve read cover-to-cover. However, once I got used to it, French Milk was effortless to enjoy. 4.5/5