Balzac's Omelette

September 5, 2011
Felicitous phrasing, a scholar’s sage scope, and enormous fondness for Balzac’s panoply of characters mark this charming, intimate look at the French novelist’s depiction of the highs and lows of 19th-century French society, as reflected in its culinary offerings. Muhlstein (Elizabeth I and Mary Stuart) explains how Balzac, boarded as a youth at schools by his busy, distracted parents, and for whom food had been a source of humiliation rather than pleasure, grew to love the pleasures of the table as a way to infiltrate “domestic dramas”; personally, he acquired near ascetic habits while writing 12 hours a day. He could throw himself into a bacchanal feast once the manuscript was finished (and charge the bill to his publisher), procuring a famous rotund belly as a result. From the publications of Les Chouans (1829) onward, the culinary rituals of the French were undergoing transformation. Restaurants flourished and lunch was prized by the young and insouciant, such as at Flicoteaux, frequented by the youth in Lost Illusions, for example, or meals at unsavory boarding houses like Madame Vauquer’s cacophonous 18-seat dining room of Père Goriot or at banquets of the newly rich, such as Taillefer’s, in The Magic Skin, where feasts were presented like an elaborate stage play and usually ended in a debacle. Muhlstein delves lovingly into Balzac’s characters, misers and gluttons alike, and finds the presentation of food an important indicator of social status, and well-cooked food equal to a woman’s love.

July 1, 2011

Delicious is right; who could turn down the opportunity to revisit French food and French culture with the Goncourt Prize-winning Muhlstein, noted biographer of folks like Queen Victoria and Cavelier de La Salle? Grounded in Balzac, this meditation works via the motto, "Tell me where you eat, what you eat, and at what time you eat, and I will tell you who you are."

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 1, 2011

Like the many feasts it describes--historical and fictional--this book presents readers with course after course, carefully crafted to appeal to palates with a taste for history, biography, or literary criticism. Award-winning historian and biographer Muhlstein (Elizabeth I and Mary Stuart) delivers a palimpsest that is part wide-ranging study of French culture and daily life in the early 19th century, part biography, and part in-depth consideration of the importance and treatment of food in Balzac's novels. Muhlstein contrasts Balzac's habits and concerns (quite often his creditors) with characters and scenes from his many novels and grounds all these in the necessary context of the social and political history of the era. VERDICT Well written and thorough, this title will appeal most to students of French history, lovers of Balzac and his writings, and those with a deep interest in food history; it might be a bit rich in detail for the taste of a casual reader. [Previewed in "Booked Solid: Falls Finds from BEA 2011," LJ 7/11.]--Courtney Greene, Indiana Univ. Libs., Bloomington

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.