Once upon a time, my best friend and I owned a business. Of the many lovely experiences we offered, Book & Dinner Club was my favorite. Over the course of six weeks, we would host a group of women to discuss a book with a strong focus on food and/or travel and feed them home-cooked meals based on the foods mentioned in the text. Most of the books we read (Taste, by Stanley Tucci; Under the Tuscan Sun, by Frances Mayes; My Berlin Kitchen, by Luisa Weiss; The Sweet Life in Paris, by David Lebovitz) were part memoir, part cookbook. Selecting which amazing recipes to present to the group each Tuesday night could be difficult, but there was simplicity in making what was clearly outlined on the pages.

I think that most of the women really enjoyed most of the books, but there were consistent whisperings about reading a fictional book to mix things up. As the designated book-finder, I read a few novels that the Internet told me related to food. Some were ok, others not so grand. Eventually, I decided to go back to non-fiction options and Ruth Reichl’s name kept coming up in author searches. Soon, I found out that Ruth was had spent years as a food and restaurant critic before serving as the editor-in-chief at Gourmet Magazine. So, she must know something about food! I finally looked at her full list of books and discovered to my pleasure, that she had written a novel aptly titled, Delicious!

Suffice it to say that Delicious! was a Book & Dinner Club hit. Although it only included one recipe, the book was full of sumptuous descriptions of things to eat, and we had a great time looking up coordinating recipes to share with our guests. Following that book club, I followed Ruth on social media and signed up to receive her newsletter. This spring, I was thrilled to find out that she was publishing a second fiction title, The Paris Novel.

I was fortunate to attend a book signing event for The Paris Novel earlier this month in Evanston, Illinois, to hear directly from Ruth about her inspiration for the story (remorsefully not buying a “magical” dress in Paris), some favorite comfort foods (she prefers sweet butter to salted on a great baguette), and how her career critiquing food taught her to actually experience all of her senses, not just taste.

The Paris Novel is a sweet read about a mid-career NYC woman, who travels to Paris via a post-mortem demand and inheritance from her unattached mother. At the outset of the story, Stella struggles to savor any form of pleasure or enjoyment, be it fashion, food, travel, friendship or community. Stemming from childhood sexual trauma (it’s not explicitly detailed, but may be triggering for some readers), Stella adopted rigid routines and set low expectations for how to navigate life. She is predictably ruffled to travel to France alone and spends most of her time and money drudging through the streets, desperately trying to avoid anything that reminds her of her self-absorbed socialite mother Celia.

But, in ways that can only occur in the meet-cutes of such novels, a chance encounter with a curmudgeonly shopkeeper changes the course of Stella’s destiny when she purchases a vintage Dior dress. Through a series of somewhat far-fetched, yet too-charming-to-criticize encounters with a cast of characters steeped in real Parisian history, Stella learns to appreciate her life for what it is, rather than bemoan what it isn’t. And, because of, rather than in spite of her mother, Stella begins to develop her core sense of identity by allowing herself to love and be loved.

This book may be for you if you also like: Ruth Reichl; restaurant reviews; Paris; New York City; cooking food; eating food; reading delectable descriptions of food; solo travel; Shakespeare & Co. bookstore; speaking French; chefs; Michelin star restaurants; fiction; novels about recovering one’s sense of identity; Dior; Yves Saint Laurent; luxury fashion; Place des Voges; the Latin Quarter; traveling; historical references; the 1980s; Europe; Delicious! (novel by Ruth Reichl).

Bonus: Ruth Reichl has a really fabulous Substack called La Briffe, which I highly recommend subscribing to. She is a wonderful storyteller and has decades of experiences to share, from vintage menus of landmark culinary establishments to anecdotes from working with and learning from celebrated chefs.

Buy the book: https://bookshop.org/a/109412/9780812996302
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SDG

LMB #5