It’s All Maya!

Chez Moi:

I don’t usually compare books when I do a book review of something I’ve read, but these two books have so many similarities, yet nothing in common, that I just had to write about both of them simultaneously.  (I know it’s an oxymoron, but it fits here perfectly.)

I first read Chez Moi by Agnès Desarthe and I was rather disappointed by what sounded like a delectable feast for the literary senses that instead left me starving for any real action or substance. 

The story is about Myriam, a 43 year old woman who decides to open a restaurant in the 11th arrondissement of Paris.  Myriam brings with her all the baggage from her past. 

There are two incidences in Myriam’s life that changes her forever.  The first is the birth of her son, Hugo.  She is overwhelmed with so much love and pride for this perfect tiny baby that she has to show him off to everyone.  “….he’s a work of art.” says Myriam and her husband slaps her across the face.  This one gesture, in a split second, takes all the love she has for her son away from her.  Moments later she looks at her son, he smiles at her and the love that she had, is gone.

(*Spoiler*)  The second incident relates to the first.  Her son, Hugo, grows up to be a model student, a perfect son who never gives her any problems, except for one.  Psychologically she’s bothered that she can’t love her son.  Instead she begins to shower that love onto her son’s best friend, Octave.  When the boy is 16, she has an affair with him.  The consequences are harsh, when the husband learns of the affair, he kicks her out to the street and she no longer has any contact with her son.  Myriam with nowhere to go, joins the circus where she learns how to cook.  When the circus leaves town, once again Myriam is left on her own and decides to borrow money to open a restaurant.

Maya Muses:  Although there are some good ideas here, Desarthe doesn’t develop the characters enough for us to have any affinity for Myriam, nor for her restaurant Chez Moi.  Nothing comes alive; not Paris, not the restaurant, not the locals from the neighborhood, nor her assistant/waiter Ben, nor the clientele who come to Chez Moi, and least of all her two love interest, Vincent, the florist next door, and Ali. 

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Hungry Woman in Paris:

If you compare Chez Moi to Hungry Woman in Paris, it’s like comparing a bland dish with no salt and no flavor, to a culinary delicacy perfectly seasoned!  What doesn’t come alive in Agnès Desarthe’s novel, explodes with colors, tastes, and  aromas in Josefina López’s first novel, Hungry Woman in Paris.

Canela is about to marry quite a catch, her fiancé is a surgeon, but Canela gets cold feet and decides to run off to Paris using one of the tickets that was meant for her Honeymoon!  (A girl after my own heart!  LOL!)  After a week of living it up in Paris, Canela tells Rosemary, an old college friend of hers who’s living in a tiny chambre de bonne in the 16th arrondisement, that she can’t go back to the States!  She wants to stay in Paris!  Being Latina, no place is too small where you can’t squeeze in another body, so Canela takes up residence in Rosemary’s room! 

As Canela’s tourist visa is about to expire, she decides to enroll in a famous cooking school in Paris just to be legal.  If cooking is not exactly her forte, seducing chefs and other Parisian men is!  Where Myriam seems to be sexually inhibited, Canela is sowing her wild oats and Paris is indeed her oyster!  Where Myriam talks about what she’s preparing in her restaurant like she’s reciting a grocery list, Canela takes us step by step as she learns the chefs’ secrets in preparing sauces, cooking traditional French delicacies, and whipping up custards and soufflés!

There’s a gamut of emotions she has to deal with living in a new country and all the frustrations she has not being able to speak French fluently, or confronting administrative problems like getting her carte de sejour.  Like Myriam, Canela also has issues with her past and her family, but we slowly get to understand why, as she takes us back to her childhood in flashbacks. 

She, too, like Myriam is lonely, but where Myriam remains isolated in her restaurant and we don’t identify with her; on the other hand, we feel Canela’s loneliness and accept the reasons for the decisions she makes.  The people and the places come alive as Canela sits at cafés and bars around the city, finds herself in Pigalle at a swinger’s club, or visits a young Maghrébin at his HLM in the banlieue of Paris during the rioting, but we’re also along for the ride while she’s having lunch at Ladurée with a handsome Frenchman, or is being solicited by an Asian shopper at Louis Vuitton on the Champs-Elysées. 

These are some of her more tame adventures I can speak about…. hmm, or else I’m just leaving out some of the more racier parts!  Yes, Canela is hungry for life and after a year in Paris, and receiving her cooking diploma, she returns home to her family a changed person.

Maya Muses:  López’s novel is a delicious read that leaves you completely satisfied like you would be after a wonderful dinner with great company, good wine and a scrumptious dessert!  Two things I’m compelled to mention, however.  A tiny chambre de bonne does not come with a nice large bathtub, not even in the 16th, but since this is a work of fiction, I’ll overlook it!  LOL.

I have a pet peeve about bloggers adding French words for no actual reason except maybe to show others how much, or how little, French they know, but in a literary piece of work I find it quite acceptable.  López does this throughout her novel, but quite often the necessity of using culinary and colloquial terms demands it. 

This is even more evident with the Spanish expressions that are used throughout her novel as well, but, that said, this is exactly how many Mexican-American families in the Southwest and California speak.  It’s a combination of words where part of a sentence is in English and part is in Spanish - Spanglish.  Or very often two or three words are peppered in, in Spanish/English, and the rest is spoken in English/Spanish.  A colloquialism that I don’t speak, but understand quite well.

Photo Credits:  Google Images