This effervescent volume celebrates Balzac’s use of gastronomy as a literary device and social critique.” —The New Yorker
“Fabulous...worth nibbling on, as prelude or accompaniment to the pièce de résistance, ‘The Human Comedy.’” —New York Times Book Review
“Balzac’s Omelette...is a charming and modest little book.” —New York Review of Books
“Muhlstein uses Balzac as a guide to the French culinary scene of the 19th century in a literary analysis that is original, delectable and entirely readable.” —Washington Post
“This scholarly yet escapist book explores how French cuisine influenced Honoré de Balzac’s genius...irresistible.” —Daily Beast
“An absorbing and insightful portrait of Balzac...and of the role that food played in 19th-century France.” —Wall Street Journal
“Muhlstein’s gastronomic and cultural tour of 19th-century France is concocted from food references in Balzac’s work.” —Entertainment Weekly
“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 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.” —Publishers Weekly
“The story of post-Revolution food in Paris and the rise of food as a literary metaphor, as told through Balzac’s work...Not just for French lit majors—honest.” —France Magazine
“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...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...” —Library Journal
“‘Balzac brought meals into literature,’ writes Anka Muhlstein, delivering up an elegant, mouthwatering feast. Here is food as characterization, as preoccupation, as consolation—a gastronomic tour of 19th century France in which Balzac serves as headwaiter.” —Stacy Schiff, author of Cleopatra: A Life
“Alimentarians great and humble will want to own, read, and reread Balzac’s gastronomic tour of nineteenth-century Paris and the provinces, reconstructed from his food-infused novels with delicacy and brilliance by Anka Muhlstein.” —Jason Epstein, Eating: A Memoir
“This is a superb book, a delightful plunge into 19th century French culture and life in all its glory, a real page turner. If you love books, the art of writing, or dinner parties, if you revel in France, if travel and culture are your thing, Balzac’s Omelette will please you more than any other book this season. Bon appétit!” —André Bernard, author of Now All We Need Is a Title and Bartlett’s Book of Anecdotes
“Reading Balzac's Omelette is like going to a party where all the guests are brilliant and entertaining, the food is exquisite, and you wish it would never end.” —Jeanne Martinet, author of The Art of Mingling
“For anyone who loves to read, or eat, or both, Anka Muhlstein’s terrific Balzac’s Omelette is a must: the historian takes on the evolution of food in fiction—specifically Balzac’s—with results that I could (but won’t) call mouth-watering. I’m a total food-history nerd, but I don’t think you’d need to be to enjoy what’s ultimately a treatise on the making of modern French culture.” —Sadie Stein, The Paris Review Daily
“Anka Muhlstein folds wit into scholarship as easily as breaking an egg. Let us now join hands and say grace for her brilliant and beguiling Balzac’s Omelette.” —Patricia Volk, author of Stuffed and To My Dearest Friends
“Balzac’s Omelette is perhaps less of an omelette than a light and charming soufflé. Or perhaps a meze, where you can pick and choose among choice bits of information or anecdote at will. And ultimately it has the effect of awakening your appetite for more than food…sending you back to the bookshelf to reread Balzac’s novels themselves.” –The East Hampton Star
…charming…Much of the text itself, in Adriana Hunter's elegant translation, delights. So do the book's illustrations…Balzac's Omelette is worth nibbling on, as prelude or accompaniment to the pièce de résistance, The Human Comedy.
—The New York Times Book Review
…original, delectable and entirely readable.
—The Washington Post
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. (Oct.)
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
