The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry: Love, Laughter, and Tears at the World's Most Famous Cooking School

Binding: Hardcover
EAN: 9780670018222
Edition: 1ST
ISBN: 0670018228
Label: Viking Adult
Languages:EnglishUnknownEnglishOriginal LanguageEnglishPublished
Manufacturer: Viking Adult
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 304
Publication Date: October 04, 2007
Publisher: Viking Adult
Studio: Viking Adult

Features:

• When the author, an American journalist and software executive working in London, is sacked from her high-powered job, she enrolls as a student at the Cordon Bleu school in Paris.
• With limited cooking skills and grasp of the French language, she gamely attempts to master the school's challenging curriculum of traditional French cuisine.
• As if she didn't have enough on her plate eviscerating fish and knocking out pâtéà choux, she determines to write a book about her experience and gets married along the way.
• The result is a readable if sentimental chronicle of that year in Paris in which her love life is explored in great detail, dirty weekends and all, and cooking features as a metaphor for self-discovery. Some readers may feel disappointed that the narrator's encounters with French cookery remain largely confined to her lessons at the Cordon Bleu.
• On those rare occasions when she ventures into the food-obsessed city, the descriptions of meals are glancing at best. Although her struggles with the language and lack of knowledge about the culture lend comic elements to the story (once, trying to order a pizza over the phone, she said, Je suis une pizza-I am a pizza), they, too, constrain the author's culinary explorations. (Oct.)

---

Related Items:

• The Kitchen Counter Cooking School: How a Few Simple Lessons Transformed Nine Culinary Novices into Fearless Home Cooks
• How to Cook Without a Book: Recipes and Techniques Every Cook Should Know by Heart
• The Sweet Life in Paris: Delicious Adventures in the World's Most Glorious - and Perplexing - City
• My Life from Scratch: A Sweet Journey of Starting Over, One Cake at a Time
• The Making of a Chef: Mastering Heat at the Culinary Institute of America
• see more

Alternate Versions: Click to Display

Browse for similar items by category: Click to Display

---

Editorial Review:

Product Description:
A delightful true story of food, Paris, and the fulfillment of a lifelong dream

In 2003, Kathleen Flinn, a thirty-six-year-old American living and working in London, returned from vacation to find that her corporate job had been eliminated. Ignoring her mother’s advice that she get another job immediately or “never get hired anywhere ever again,” Flinn instead cleared out her savings and moved to Paris to pursue a dream—a diploma from the famed Le Cordon Bleu cooking school. The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry is the touching and remarkably funny account of Flinn’s transformation as she moves through the school’s intense program and falls deeply in love along the way. Flinn interweaves more than two dozen recipes with a unique look inside Le Cordon Bleu amid battles with demanding chefs, competitive classmates, and her “wretchedly inadequate” French. Flinn offers a vibrant portrait of Paris, one in which the sights and sounds of the city’s street markets and purveyors come alive in rich detail. The ultimate wish fulfillment book, her story is a true testament to pursuing a dream. Fans of Julie & Julia, Almost French, and Eat, Pray, Love will be amused, inspired, and richly rewarded by this seductive tale of romance, Paris, and French food.

---

Books

Kindle Fire, Full Color 7" Multi-touch Display, Wi-Fi In association with amazon.com Product price accurate as of 02/23/2012 04:51 EST and is subject to change. $199.00