Review of “Julie & Julia”
by HOLLY HAGAN
My first introduction to the book Julie & Julia was in 2007, when I attended the Tin House Writers Workshop and had a three-minute meeting with the book’s editor. The meeting was for us to pitch our ideas and for the editors to give suggestions. I was so nervous I wanted to puke and the three minutes seemed to drag on for an eternity as I stumbled through the plot of my novel.
When I saw the book in Barnes & Noble a few months later, I didn’t buy it. Although Julie Powell had everything I wanted-a best-selling novel and movie rights-Julie & Julie, I felt, was below my own literary aspirations.
I had low expectations for the movie, too, but I was curious and secretly wanted to see it. There was something I felt I could relate to in the premise of a woman, approaching thirty, who felt she had once held so much promise. Her friends were successful, but she languished in a secretarial job with the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, taking phone calls from 9/11 victims a year after the attacks. In college, she had been an aspiring novelist who never finished anything she started, but decides to take on all 536 recipes of Mastering the Art of French Cooking in 365 days and document it in the Julie/Julia Project.
The Julie Powell story is mirrored by the story of Julia Child adapted from her memoir My Life in France. The parallels between the two stories are there, but barely. The enthusiasm with which Child embraces the challenge of finding something to keep her occupied in Paris and her determination to prove herself in a roomful of male chefs falls flat compared to Julie Powell’s self-indulgent collapses on the kitchen floor when something goes wrong-be it a dish or a magazine reporter’s no-show for an interview on her project. But it’s fine because Julie and her husband are completely aware of her self-absorbed antics. I related. I have my own collapses over non-problems everyday.
Julia Child passed away during the Julie/Julie Project, but before, she was interviewed and expressed her displeasure with the project, something Julie later chalked up to less irritation than disinterest.
In the end, I was pleased with Julie & Julia, but the Julie Powell story could not be stand on it’s own. Although I came into this knowing only the basics of Julia Child, I left wanting to know more about her life. However, the life of an aspiring New York writer working a dead end job was one I could relate to. In the end, she had to do what she loved and what made her happy.
