No one did more to change American attitudes toward food and home cooking than Julia Child. For more than 30 years, this television icon inspired and encouraged viewers' culinary pursuits with her confident joie de vivre and a voice Bob Spitz describes as "a cross between Tallulah Banks and a slide whistle." Spitz's Dearie, published to coincide with the centennial of Child's birth, is a comprehensive biography that fizzes with the humor and spirit of its subject's remarkable life.
Spitz shows us Child's formative years and how an adolescence that stretched into adulthood allowed her to develop the independent, rebellious spirit that would help her shine a bright light against the onslaught of over-processed convenience foods. He devotes ample space to Paul, Julia's husband, an artistic and romantic man of the world who considered his wife "a veritable goddess" and with whom she enjoyed years of wedded bliss.
Spitz and Child intended to collaborate on her biography, a decision made as they toured Sicily together in 1992, when Spitz interviewed Child for several magazines. Child passed away while Spitz was completing another biography (The Beatles), but Spitz continued the project, through letters and diaries belonging to Julia and Paul Child as well as her closest friends Simone "Simca" Beck and Avis DeVoto, plus interviews with friends, family and colleagues. Dearie may not be the only biography of Julia Child on bookstore shelves, but Spitz's joyous and definitive rendering of an American icon will inspire readers in the kitchen and beyond. --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger, Infinite Reads