Mme Proust and the Kosher Kitchen

by Kate Taylor

Stretching between turn-of-the-century Paris and contemporary Canada, Mme Proust and the Kosher Kitchen is the story of three women whose lives intersect across time to reveal the intrinsic bonds of our collective and personal histories. It is a rich and compassionate debut, a novel that encourages us to explore the depths of love and memory, of life and of art. Unable to escape the pain of her unrequited love for Max Segal, Marie Prvost travels to Paris in order to study the writing of her other great the novelist Marcel Proust. Marie is bilingual and works as a simultaneous translator in Montreal, and believes that reading Proust's original papers will give her insights into love and loss that just may mend her broken heart. But when Marie arrives in Paris, Marcel remains as elusive as the strict officials at the Bibliotque Nationale only allow her access to the peripheral papers of File 263 -- a much ignored and poorly catalogued collection of the diaries kept by Jeanne Proust, Marcel's mother. Despite the head librarian's opinion that they contain only the "natterings of a housewife," Marie begins to translate them, and discovers that Jean Proust's diary is as illuminating for what is not said as what is there. Entwined with Marie's story are the diary entries that she has Jeanne Proust's records of day-to-day life in her Paris household, which make up the second strand of this novel. Jeanne's diary includes all aspects of life at 9 Boulevard Malesherbes, everything from the difficulties of cutting rich desserts from the dinner menu to the latest Parisian headlines to her fears for the health and literary ambitions of Marcel. She's a worrier, Madame Proust, but also ferociously protective and supportive of her frail son, and the trials of her small world come across as powerfully as the goings-on outside her doors

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, France, Canada, Book Club, Adult Fiction, Literary Fiction

478 pages, Paperback

First published January 14, 2003

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

This is the page for Canadian novelist and cultural journalist Kate Taylor, author of Mme Proust and the Kosher Kitchen and A Man in Uniform.

British sex columnist Kate Taylor is the author of Not Tonight, Mr. Right.

American arts journalist Kate Taylor is the editor of Going Hungry: Writers on Desire, Self-Denial, and Overcoming Anorexia

The child of a Canadian diplomat, Kate Taylor was born in France and raised in Ottawa. Her debut novel, Mme Proust and the Kosher Kitchen, won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for best first book (Canada/Caribbean region) and the Toronto Book Award. Her second novel, A Man in Uniform, is a finalist for the Ontario Library Association's 2011 Evergreen Award.
She also writes about culture for the Globe and Mail, where she served as the paper’s award-winning theatre critic from 1995-2003. In 2009-2010, she was awarded the Atkinson Fellowship in journalism to study Canadian cultural sovereignty in the digital age. The results were published in the Toronto Star in September, 2010.

Reviews

[Felice · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are a few cover images that I am a sucker for. One of them is a kettle. Not a Ma or Pa Kettle but a boil the water kettle. I will always, always examine a book with a kettle on the cover. There was always a kettle on my Mother's stove and I love the shape of them. I guess that's the appeal. Plus I drink a lot of tea too if that counts.

Hence my picking up Madame Proust and the Kosher Kitchen by author Kate Taylor. Once again the power of the kettle (thank you mighty kettle) didn't let me down. This is also a first novel which is another favorite catagory for me. Madame Proust is a marvelous, thoughtful novel. This is the story of 3 women, 3 different time periods and the power of love and memory.

The Madame Proust of the title is the real Madame Proust. Marie, in Paris from Montreal, is working on a life of Proust but when she arrives at the Bibliotèque Nationale the files containing the uncatalogued diaries of Madame are all she's allowed to see. They are described disdainfully by the head librarian as "the natterings of a housewife". Marie begins the translation and is immediately absorbed in Jean Proust's writings. Jean's worries about her frail son and the management of her household are interesting but it is her writings on the headlines of the day and experiences as a Jewish woman in a Catholic family that bewitch Marie.

Interwoven into Madame's story are Marie's and Sophie's. Marie is burying herself in work in response to a bad love affair with Sophie's son, Max. Sophie is the child of French Jews who died in the Holocaust. She was sent to Canada as a child and adopted. Despite the love of her adoptive family, Sophie is unable to stop worrying and as adult is unable bond with her husband and son.

What binds the experiences of these woman into a novel and not a series of short stories is superior writting. Their need to protect what they love and yet not be able to get close to what they love is moving. The marriage of all the histories and the characters makes this a very successful first novel. That and how very readable it is. Taylor is able to fade in and out of these 3 lives as easily as clouds cover and uncover sunlight.


Happy.

P.S. Confession time. The edition of Madame that I picked up is the one with the kettle, but the current edition is kettle-less and much less attractive, but pick it up anyway, ok?

[Larry · Rating 2 out of 5]

I finished this some time ago but failed to write a review as I don't like to be too critical but i just have to say this was a disappointment.

As one who will read anything about Proust this was a tantalizing prospect. Let me say at the outset that it is well written overall but falls down in achieving what is promised a coherent knitting together of the various threads that make up the novel. At a little shy of 500 pages I think it could have done with some serious editing, the best parts are the diary of Mme Proust. Its when the story of Sarah (Max and Marie) comes to the 1980’s and 90s that the story becomes pedantic and uninteresting.
The thread (over a century) that joins the periods and characters is at best thin and somewhat contrived. The author says through one of the key characters Marie towards the end “I had some faint sense of a link between Max and Proust, a hunch….” I feel that’s about it not much more than a hunch. The critics (I don’t read before I read a book) say that the links are “Intricately structured” etc., I can easily see that characters in different times bear some resemblances but nothing that one could add specificity. That Jewish mothers dote on their sons, that those same sons may not provide grandkids as they may be gay is not something that only happened to Mme Proust in 1900 and a mother in Toronto in 1990 and sufficient to formulate a story!
There are some nicely written portions of the book and I repeat the diary section is excellent. I wanted to like this more but alas!!!!

[Czarny Pies · Rating 4 out of 5]

As "Mme. Proust and the Kosher Kitchen" draws towards its close, Marie Prévost the main protagonist expresses the dominant idea of the novel: "I have found the cure tor heartbreak. It is literature." (p. 414) It is a fitting conclusion for a work that tells three dreary tales of failed relationships. The first involves the mother of Marcel Proust and her son the famous author. The second is about Sarah Bensimon who as a Jewish child who is sent away from Nazi-occupied Paris to live in the safety of the new world. The third story is about Marie Prévost who has a great unrequited love for Sophie's son Max. "Mme. Proust and the Kosher Kitchen" succeeds adequately in English but would probably work much better in French as few Anglophone readers know enough about the life of Marcel Proust to truly appreciate the novel's best points.
All three stories are linked. Those of Marie and Sophie are united by virtue of the fact that Marie is in love with Max. Sophie is connected to Proust because she is Jewish and Parisian like Proust. Marie by virtue of loving books is also joined to Proust. Unfortunately the best written story, that of Proust poses great problems for the typical English language reader.
Taylor simply knows not only Proust but his entourage too well. She makes brilliant observations about Proust's relations with Lucien Daudet, Anatole France, Henri Bergson, and Anna de Noailles all prominent French writes of the era none of whom is well known outside of the French-speaking world. Taylor also displays knowledge of the Dreyfus controversy that go well beyond what the average English speaker would be aware. The problem is that what most of Taylor's readers retain from the Proust story is that Proust's mother was over possessive and that Proust cynically manipulated her to get what he wanted.
A second problem is that Taylor's remarkable insights about Canada and Canadian culture may also be too subtle for anyone who is not Canadian to understand.
What I like about "Mme. Proust and the Kosher Kitchen" is that it is a complete cross-purposes with today's discourse. At a time when gender diversity is being promoted, I enjoyed reading a novel about a young woman for whom the homosexuality of the man she loved was a tragedy.

[Catherine Davison · Rating 3 out of 5]

There was a lot I really liked about this book, I liked the scenes with the researcher going to the French library to read MmeProust's diaries and recognising in the extracts the beginnings of Proust's famous work. I still haven't read the Remembrance of Things Past, I remember saying in my twenties I'd read it before I turned forty .... ah well I'll read it before I turn sixty. This book however was interesting in its fictionalisation of Proust's constantly worried mother but the more modern mothers in the story worried that their sons might be gay and not give them grandchildren, no, their concerns didn't seem relevant and the story lost its cohesion by trying to draw a connection between the three mothers. An ok read but I'm not recommending it.

[SilveryTongue · Rating 3 out of 5]

03, estrellas

Esta novela se compone de tres historias: los diarios de Jeanne Proust; la madre del novelista francés Marcel Proust (En busca del tiempo perdido), una traductora, que precisamente traduce estos diarios y la tercera, es de una niña judia refugiada en Canada.

Personalmente me quedo con la historia de Jeanne Proust, las otras lamentablemente no lograron mi interés, a pesar de su aparente relación con Madame Proust.

"He encontrado la cura para el desconsuelo. Es la literatura. Aunque no he descubierto nada que el hijo del doctor Proust no supiera hace un siglo" Madame Proust y la cocina kosher.

[Gail · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. I was intrigued by the title. I knew Marcel's mother was Jewish but where did the kosher kitchen come from? However, Kate Taylor wove together two basic stories: Marcel Proust's relationship with his mother, the story of a Jewish child sent by her parents to Canada to survive the holocaust and her life and marriage, and the relationship between the her son and the narrator.
This novel also enabled me to understand Proust and finish reading In Search of Lost Time.

[Tracey · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this book , I’ve enjoyed a few hours happily imagining myself in Paris!

[Maddy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I assumed this book would be a lot fluffier than it is. It deals with some pretty heavy stuff and seems to deserve a heavier, one-or-two word name , as opposed to a character and an important symbol from two different stories (which are, of course, related).

On the whole, I liked it, though it's definitely a "tell, not show" sort of book, in that character's motivations are spelled out in narration, rather than only having their actions indicate their motivations. Telling is generally considered a lower form of story telling than showing. (I feel like I should cite something for that, but I run into it in a lot of critical reviews of art, especially for TV and film.) But I personally don't mind, especially when done by Milan Kundera, the King of Expository Narration. That said, it does seem a bit clunky in this book. There are some parallels between the three entwined stories that seem a bit...obvious. (Present day Marie pines after a guy who, we find out late in the book, is gay. The historical artist and translator Marie who's friends with Proust is implied to be in love with him! Coincidence!) And yet, some motivations remain weirdly obscure to me - it's not clear to me why Current Marie pines after a gay man for so long, and 5 years after cutting off the friendship, makes an impulsive decision (flee to Frace! Study Proust!) that seems more like fresh grief than the frustration of not being over someone that you feel you should be over. (This is coming from someone who knows the latter feeling all too well. I'm puzzled by Current Marie's complacency about her own habits - but perhaps I'm more self-critical than she was. I don't see any frustration of not being able to control your own emotions even after a long time. It's not clear if she's seen other people, distracted herself with hobbies etc or just rolled over and accepted she'll love a gay man for 5 years. Yikes.)

I can't decide if I appreciate the author's decision to use three intertwining tales spanning a century to examine the pyschology of neurotic women who are much too attached to the men in their lives. On the one hand, it's a hazard of being female that most (including lots of feminists, I'm sure) would like to ignore. The author doesn't directly state that this may be a byproduct of a patriarchy where (bourgeoise) women don't work outside the home, but it is implied that while Mme Proust and Sarah may die (or at least get to age 70) neurotically worrying about and cosseting their sons and seemingly having little of their own identity, Old-Timey Marie Nordlinger and Current Marie can possibly pull themselves out of sexual attachments to gay men via their careers (and by identifying with men and male agency, as Current Marie decides to, like Proust, move from translation to authorship, non-agency to ageny). It may take 5+ years though, career ladies; be warned.

On the other hand, it's really, really hard to sympathize with neurotic characters who don't have a lot of agency (even when they can), even if enough back story is given (over-narration!) to make their insecurities believable and understandable. I assume the author wanted to reclaim the negative stereotype of smothering mothers and pathetic fag hags (?) but I'm not sure it's entirely successful. Sarah is the most pathetic but also the most unlovable character and her cathartic moment is not followed up on. Again, the over-narration tells us that she's finally able to grieve her son's grandparents and her grandchildren* (nice line!) but we don't see a follow up to see if it stuck, or if it made her less emotionally-distant-yet-anxious. There's some hope, I guess.

Lastly, I've read a lot of these first-person-narrator-starts-to-write-the-novel-you've-just-finished stories lately (I suppose it's inevitable if the novel addresses the importance of novel-writing in a post-modern way) and man, it's getting cliched fast. I don't quite understand how Current Marie knows enough of Sarah's life to write the novel as it's implied that Max doesn't talk about it much. Perhaps Sarah's life is entirely Marie's imagination, which adds another (to me) vaguely annoying post-modern unreliable narrator layer.

*The complete non-mention of possible gay adoption brings up (a) the fact that this book was written before national legalized gay marriage in Canada and (b) the book's theme that adoption is not enough (for Sarah anyway) and the loss of blood relations haunts your life. In some ways this book is completely politically incorrect. Women are neurotic beings completely tied to their relationships with men! Adoption will never fill your aching need to belong! Come to think of it, this book probably barely passes the Bechtel Test, very surprising for a book written by a woman with three female protagonists.

[Rachelle Urist · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was sometimes confused while reading this book. The author switches voices, from one narrator to another, during the course of the story-telling. When I couldn't tell whether the narrator was Sarah, Marie, or someone else, it was frustrating. On the other hand, the research that went into the stories, particularly into the diary that Taylor creates for Mme. Proust, is spectacular. The diary entries held my attention throughout. Ditto for the story of young Sarah, sent to Canada from Paris by her parents just before the deportations of Jews under Hitler. But the parallel stories, ie, the stories of the adult Sarah, her son, Max, and Max's friend, Marie, all of which serve as foil to the older stories (the Proust family story and the story of young Sarah Bensimon), resemble their prototypes a bit too closely for my taste. It felt contrived.

Still, the whole is impressive for its erudition, its investment in examining and reclaiming historical fact, and for sharing the concerns of yesteryear by showing how they remain very real, continuing concerns today. For anyone interested in French language and literature, this book has particular appeal. I loved learning more about Marcel Proust and his family, particularly his Jewish mother (though Marcel was raised in his father's Catholic faith). By making Mme. Proust's contemporary incarnation a holocaust survivor, we get a better sense of what the Dreyfus affair may have meant to Mme. Proust, who never quite fit in with her Catholic family-through-marriage. Sarah's losses make everyday life a series of prospective horrors. Her anxieties, while hard to bear (even for the reader) make sense. The parallel stories of their sons, both promising young men with talent to succeed on several fronts, are rife with disappointment. The mothers cannot abide their sons' homosexuality.

I wish I knew whether the confusion I suffered during the reading has its source in me or in the writing.

[Linda · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting book, especially the diary entries and glimpse into who Proust was. But I found the characters a bit confusing as to how they fit into the overall story and had to keep reminding myself of who they were and what/why they were talking.

[Katie · Rating 4 out of 5]

helps to have read (at least some of) Remembrance of Things Past, but probably still enjoyable.

[Montserrat · Rating 3 out of 5]

La coberta de l'edició espanyola és un veritable horror. No explica ni evoca res del llibre.

[Tony Lawrence]

I picked this up from a charity shop in Chester, triggered by my interest in Jewish literature and the connection with Proust. I didn't know, until reading the blurb, that Proust's mother was Jewish*, and so was he (by matrilineal descent) ... I will add this to my informal Proustian reading challenge!

*His father Dr.Adrien Proust was a Catholic, and probably the most famous son of Illiers (Combray) before his son!

This was a lucky find in a charity shop, connecting Proust’s masterpiece, his real life, and some French and Jewish history & culture. It is a clever blend of different stories, recurring themes, and timelines; is it sacrilegious to say it’s too complicated? This is what I understood about the plot (includes spoilers) - buckle up! The main thread that ties it all together is modern-day research by a young Anglo-French Canadian Marie Prevost who is translating Madame Proust’s [fictional] diaries. The diary entries cleverly detail key events in the Proust household and the wider Parisian period ‘La Belle Epoche’ events, including the reaction to the Dreyfus scandal. This is a ‘book within a book’, and although interesting for a Proustian scholar, doesn’t add must to the other storylines. While doing this [translation] Marie looks for evidence of Proust in Paris and the German invasion in WW2 (see below), and is unconsciously looking for some direction in her own life - of which more later.

In a seemingly unrelated storyline, a 12 year-old Jewish girl Sarah Bensimon (Ben Simon?) is smuggled out of Paris by her parents through an ‘underground’ route to Canada to a childless couple in Montreal, Rachel and Sam Plot. Sarah never fully embraces her new adopted life, suffering - I think - a mixture of survivor’s guilt and a trauma-by-proxy when she eventually pieces together the cruel deaths of her parents in Auschwitz. She never meets her parents again and has a very sad lone visit to her previous home in Paris. No doubt linked to this unresolved history she is a very insular girl and young woman, and becomes an anxious wife and mother of Maxine ‘Max’ Bensimon Segal. The externalising of her grief and anger comes much later. It is Max who brings these diverse storylines together as the unrequited love interest of Marie (cf. Proust’s friend and collaborator Marie Nordlinger?), and other links between Max/Sarah and Marcel/Mme. Proust; Max and Marcel are gay, which their respective mother’s struggle to accept, or stay in complete denial; although Max follows his father into medicine (Marcel doesn’t), there are parallel conflicts about their life choices with fathers and mothers, a not unusual love-hate tension, but here used as a cliche of overprotective/smothering Jewish Mothers.

Kate Taylor tries to tie up the loose ends, juggling allusions across the various storylines. As modern-day Marie finally reconciles with herself that Max is lost to her, she moves from translating the diaries to fiction (this book perhaps!), similar to Marcel after his Maman’s death he moves from his Ruskin translations to focus on his ‘Recherche’.

Last, but not least, the 'Kosher Kitchen’ of the title is slightly odd, maybe the book otherwise defied description or a hook? After Rachel’s death, Sarah has a breakdown, a delayed reaction to her parents death, and her own lack of grandchildren, and destroys her Kosher kitchen (separate cookware, ovens & fridges for meat and diary). Her Kosher cookery had become an important connection to her cultural identify and females in her life, nothing to do with Proust and the madeleines [cakes] on the book cover. However, there is a connection - I think - with breaking glass and a key event between Proust and his mother, and Jewish wedding traditions. Of course I could be overthinking this. All the above notwithstanding this is a clever and enjoyable book.

[Diana Sandberg · Rating 2 out of 5]

The printed excerpts from reviews to the contrary, I didn't find this particularly compelling, nor satisfying. It is one of those books that, arriving at the end, I say to myself, "So...why?"

There are definitely good bits. Taylor has a nice touch as a writer of prose. One of the other Goodreads reviewers here, Jen, has included several long quotes from the text, and, yes, I liked all of them, particularly the one about translation and bilingualism. And the character of Mme Proust is splendid, I liked her immensely, and loved her so-apt quotes.

I found most of the other characters rather unpleasant and/or tedious, and I didn't find the "intertwining" three strands of the story of any particular interest. Mme. Proust's diaries are set in a different type from the stories of Sarah and Marie, and I did rather wish that this conceit had been extended, because I was often puzzled about which voice I was following, when it wasn't Mme.P., especially since the narrative also leaps about in time.

Right near the very end of the book, we find ourselves observing a scene in which Marie first presents her credentials at the Bibliothèque Nationale with her request to delve into the Proust archives, months earlier than most of what we've already read about her research. Here we discover she was only reading the diaries of Mme Proust because officious fonctionnaires had refused her access to any of the rest of the archives. Ok. And this needed to be concealed earlier and revealed at the end... why? The book has other such manipulative contrivances with no especial point to them and each one made me feel rather as if I'd arrived at a grand ballroom filled with music and dancing, and also workers in coveralls on ladders, screwing in lightbulbs and daubing paint.

A good story frequently contains mysteries that are slowly resolved over the course of the tale, but to accomplish this by merely withholding information and then leaping back in time to reveal it later is somewhat equivalent to an amateur magician fumbling through a routine while dropping cards out of his sleeves and then saying, TaDa!

[Wendy · Rating 3 out of 5]

A surprisingly engaging and interesting novel. I say, "surprising," as this is an older title I stumbled on (2003), indeed the first -ever novel by Canadian journalist and author Kate Taylor. I enjoyed her more recent book, "Serial monogamy" when it was published (2016).
Initially, it was a challenge to keep the three story threads separate and understood. Individual plots shift from Marcel Proust's mother's diary (so, Proust and his family's turn of the century Parisian life), the twenty-something Canadian narrator, Marie 's contemporary tale, ( researching the famous Belle Époque writer), and a young displaced girl, Sarah, who ends up in 1942 Canada (when the Nazis arrive in France). Indeed, it takes some time for the link between Sarah and the other stories to become clear.
I felt the story telling and writing improved significantly in the second half, as if Ms. Taylor warmed to her task and felt more secure about where it was going.

[Diane · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although there are three intertwining stories here in many respects they mirror each other in their content. Each has a mother/son relationship at the heart of it and how our circumstances and upbringing influence how we not only move through the world but how we deal with the difficulties of very close relationships. This is very well written as each story is allowed to develop without the author resorting to telling the reader what is going on. There is a resolution of sorts to each story that is satisfying but also the characters are drawn intently and are real, even the one character I did not like. So a good read that also shows why there is still conflict in the world because of race and religion.

[Debirah · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really hoped for more from this book. It started with such promise... My first issue was with the abrupt change from Mme. Proust to Sarah (or Marie). There was a slightly different typeface but not enough and I would realize after a paragraph so. Secondly, there were some inconsistencies. For example, the main character is referred to by two different names. She says early on she won't call her adoptive parents her mother and father and does just that later in the book.

She dealt with some big issues - the holocaust, adoption, homosexuality, politics, mental health issues and more. Perhaps the scope of the book needed to be smaller.

[Debby · Rating 1 out of 5]

It is hard to say I read this book ....As I struggled up to page 130 + and then skipped all the diary parts and read a bit more and then read the two last pages .
This is a "found" book .That is I found it in a box ,downstairs .The title sounded promising ,but I could not get in to the book .The diary part sounded very modern and written by a younger person then Proust's mother (this is not an actual diary ). There was something in the tone of the whole book that did not suit me .I could not find anything "magnificent " ,neither a fresh view of the periods she tackles in this book .

[Jill S. · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book starts off quite disjointed, and I must say, a bit boring. The letters of Mme. Proust seem to drag on, and the connection of the three concurrent stories doesn't happen until the last few pages, and is quite unsatisfactory and underwhelming. I really wanted to like this book, and the story of Sarah coming to Canada and raising her family is quite interesting, well-written, and captivating, but the rest of the book just didn't do it for me. I give it 3 stars, but it's really only Sarah's story that saved it for me.

[Alison · Rating 3 out of 5]

About what I expected from Kate Taylor. It will lead to some interesting discussion at book club.

[Gayla Bassham · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lovely and engrossing. Sarah in particular is a very compelling character.

[Alice Hatter · Rating 4 out of 5]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UhEa...

[Angel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Amena. Hay que leerla sin hambre , está llena de recetas.

[Tess Pedro · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[Tim Love · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sarah, born 1929, was evacuated from Paris to Canada in 1942. She was fostered by Sam and Rachael. In 1951 she returned to Paris to confirm that her Jewish parents had died. In 1956 back in Canada she married Dan Segal, son of Lionel and Clara. In 1966 they had Max, loved in vain by Marie, who goes to Paris to read the original journals of Proust's mother.

One can piece together this chronology from dates and interval-lengths mentioned in the text - the tales are told largely in parallel, dominated by extracts from the journals. Why would Marie (who's not an academic) make such an obsessive trip to Paris? True, she'd read Proust at school and beyond, but that doesn't explain it. Not until much later does she say that she went to see when or whether Mme Proust realised what her son's tendencies were, but I'm not convinced. Marie traces a link from Max to Marcel to Mme Proust to Sarah, but again I can't buy the emotional investment put into the Proust connection. If there was more contact between Marie and Sarah it would make more sense.

There are cross-overs between the stories - Marcel has an english-speaking friend called Marie who goes to Canada; the medical profession; glass and crockery are broken - and there are repeated themes: Jewishness, childlessness, and Mothers worrying about their son's marriages. The later Sarah bores me - too obsessed with food (but Mme Proust's no slouch herself in that regard). The scene where she smashes up her kitchen seems over-symbolic to me.

I think appreciation of the book is easier if you know Proust and like reading Journals - the extensive journal entries are made up, but sound convincing. The general reader will like the writing even so - "There is a place along a riverbank, a few urban streets quickly giving way to small country houses with gardens opening onto the towpath. Men fish, my parents walk ahead of me along the river. Have I visited this place or dreamt it? Was it the destination of a weekend outing or has my imagination given three-dimensional life to a scene painting by Serat or Monet that I must have seen in a museum?" (p.56). That extract shouldn't lead you to think that the book's "Proustian" though - Marie doesn't seem to be recovering anything, with her it's more reconsiliation.

At the end the narrator looks forward to writing this book, finding salvation in the shape of literature much as Marcel did, I suppose, and maybe like Mme Proust too. Sarah's not into the Arts, we're told.

[Cherop · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've had this book in my collection for a few years now. I was intrigued by the cover and the title. I only started reading it this past week and enjoyed it quite a lot. I would rate it more highly except that the story is told from the perspective of 3 women and I felt that this weakened the book overall since the story line of Marie and Max just did not work for me. I thoroughly enjoyed the historical diaries of Mme. Proust and this is what carried me through to the conclusion of the book. Overall a satisfying read. I have a copy to swap with anyone who has a book I might want to read. I am open to titles beyond those on my "to-read" list.

[Jack · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book. It beautifully intertwines the story of three women living in different time periods with the early years of Marcel Proust, the Dreyfuss Affair, the Holocaust, and kosher cooking. The writing is exquisite throughout, especially Mme Proust's diaries. In addition there were several places where the book spoke to me very personally and movingly.

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Absolutely loved this book (more than her more recent "A Good Solder") which brings together three plot threads set in different eras. I found the diaries of Mme. Proust fascinating and learned a lot about Marcel...may even consider attempting his somewhat intimidating masterpiece in the future!

[Kit · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enjoyed the descriptions of late 19th century Paris,Proust and the author's insights about French/English languages. I don't think the three-story structure worked very well.

[Robyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Exquisite language, beautiful story--just wonderfully crafted and difficult to put down. Recommended to Francophiles, lovers of Proust, food, and Jewish history.