{"product_id":"madame-proust-and-the-kosher-kitchen-by-kate-taylor-1","title":"Madame Proust and the Kosher Kitchen by Kate Taylor","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe story of three women, whose lives criss-cross between Paris in the 1890s, at the height of the Dreyfus affair, France again in 1941 and Canada today. The first-person narrator, a contemporary Canadian simultaneous translator, goes to Paris to research Proust and escape an unrequited love, and finds instead Mme Proust's 'unpublished diary' in the archives. Then there is Sarah, a Jewish French girl whose parents send her out of Paris in WWII to escape the round-ups; she ends up in Canada and never sees them again. She marries into an orthodox Jewish family and becomes more kosher than they are, constantly consoling herself with cooking - and we finally discover that it's her son with whom our narrator is unrequitedly in love...and he's gay. The third woman is Mme Proust herself, whose 'diaries' are fictionalised in a wonderful pastiche by Taylor, with irresistible and impecccably researched details of the mother's worries about Marcel, his late-night habits, his diet and his friends, and about the Dreyfus affair - being Jewish though completely assimilated she observes it with very different eyes from her husband's. Everything comes together poignantly and satisfyingly: the new world and the old, the Seine and the St Lawrence, mothers and sons, outsiders both Jewish and homosexual, and finally redemption through literature and cooking.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Book Express","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43814687047754,"sku":"6870c","price":9.0,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0618\/9101\/8826\/files\/6870c.jpg?v=1784263695","url":"https:\/\/www.bookexpress.nz\/products\/madame-proust-and-the-kosher-kitchen-by-kate-taylor-1","provider":"Book Express","version":"1.0","type":"link"}