Mme Proust and the Kosher Kitchen
Read Mme Proust and the Kosher Kitchen Online
Authors: Kate Taylor
“Mme Proust and the Kosher Kitchen
is all about the movements in the human heart… a wonderful hymn of praise to the domestic creativity, ferocious love of family and outspokenness of Jewish women in peculiar circumstances… It will be a surprise if
Mme Proust and the Kosher Kitchen
doesn’t work its way on to thousands of bedside tables with the same kind of word-of-mouth recommendation that turned Mary Lawson’s
Crow Lake
into a bestseller.”
The Globe and Mail
“Usually it is a sufficient accomplishment for an author to set a work of fiction in a single place and time and create characters whose voices and actions resonate with authenticity. It is much more of an achievement for an author to set a novel in three different locales and three distinct periods and still have it emerge with genuine characters whose thoughts, words and actions move and inspire… Language and history, like love itself, lie at the heart of this poignant and multi-textured novel… [an] intelligent and accomplished work of fiction.”
Winnipeg Free Press
“Set in three eras, with characters who seem unconnected, [Mme
Proust and the Kosher Kitchen]
gradually weaves the strands together to brilliant effect… Taylor’s meticulously crafted novel is an impressive debut.”
The Daily Mail
(London)
“Kate Taylor achieves, with seemingly effortless grace, a remarkable feat: the near-perfect balance between being true to history and writing an engaging and fictional tale… Jeanne Proust is brought to life through diary entries, so sensitively wrought by Taylor it is difficult to believe they do not stem straight from the archives…
Mme Proust and the Kosher Kitchen
marks the stunning emergence of a writer from whom we can expect much in the future.”
The Calgary Herald
“Magnificent… Like Michael Cunningham in his prize-winning
The Hours
, Taylor adopts a tripartite structure to show how events in a writer’s life and themes in his work have resonance for subsequent generations. Taylor’s is, however, much the richer, subtler and less deterministic work.”
The Times
(London)
“A work of sensitivity and depth from an author who writes perceptively, with many moments of lyricism. Taylor has concocted
Mme Proust and the Kosher Kitchen
from a number of important themes. It’s about anti-Semitism and the Holocaust and a survivor’s escape to Canada, reminiscent of Anne Michael’s
Fugitive Pieces
but less mannered and, ultimately, more honest in its treatment.”
The Vancouver Sun
“Enchanting. Mme Proust (a superb invention) is an irresistibly likeable character who provides unwitting rife satire. Kate Taylor takes art and life to the mat, and the representational dilemmas she wrestles with are profound. A provocative and challenging debut.”
The Toronto Star
“Fans of A.S. Byatt will be intrigued by this book.”
Flare
“A powerful book about art, the Holocaust and grief. Kate Taylor’s ambitious debut makes the fictional diaries of Jeanne Proust, mother of Marcel, its centerpiece… Jeanne Proust is a real discovery, a strong woman who has a sense of justice but doesn’t quite grasp the historical moment… [Taylor] makes this book an important contribution to the growing literature about the children of the Holocaust.”
NOW
“A moving meditation on Parisian and Toronto history.”
Maclean’s
“Kate Taylor makes an impressive fiction debut with
Mme Proust and the Kosher Kitchen
. Three interwoven stories shuttle us between France and Canada, past and present. Invented diary entries from the great novelist’s mother circa 1890s Paris appear among passages tracing the journey of Sarah Bensimon, a young Jewish woman fleeing World War II Paris, and the present-day life of a Canadian academic, Marie Prévost. The prose is elegant and spare, and the story grand and ambitious, making for a hefty volume you can really get lost in.”
Magazine les Ailes
“Reads like a dream, meticulously crafted and researched, sophisticated in style and structure.”
National Post
“A rich, satisfying novel, one which is thoughtful and generous towards its characters as well as towards its readers.”
Books In Canada
“Kate Taylor’s first novel tells the interwoven stories of three women spanning more than a century. On a deeper level… her book is about the redemptive power of literature itself. Hints of that power first appear to narrator Marie Prévost when she encounters Marcel Proust’s
A la Recherche du Temps Perdu
as a high school student… through careful pacing and often-lyrical language, Taylor braids Marie’s story into those of two other women.”
The Hamilton Spectator
“Intricately structured… brave… remarkably ambitious.”
The Ottawa Citizen
“Playing with time and memory in a style that honours Proust and his masterpiece,
Remembrance of Things Past
, Taylor shows impressive talent. She has created three strong women to weave the different strands of this story in very distinct voices… this complex novel is poetic and a rare work from a writer so young.”
The Chronicle Herald
“Kate Taylor travels back and forth in time between France and Canada in her debut novel… a sophisticated and compelling narrative about three women… that spans the twentieth century, the bloodiest on record.”
Elle Canada
for the companions of childhood:
Andrew, Sarah, Pegatha, and James
“Life is very nice, but it has no shape.
The object of art is actually to give it some…”
—Jean Anouilh,
The Rehearsal
S
OPHIE NEEDED SOME STONES
, but could not think where she might find any in the midst of the city. She wasn’t looking for a great boulder, but neither would she be satisfied with the few scrapings of gravel she could surreptitiously remove from the tiny, urbanized garden that jutted but a metre onto the pavement in front of the ground-floor flat in the building three doors down from her own. Wondering where she could get more sizable specimens, she remembered now with fondness and regret the tin bucket of pebbles and seashells that the child had kept in her bedroom for many years, souvenirs of their holidays that the little one had gathered on the beach and then refused to part with when it came time to get on the train and return home. And Sophie recalled too their regular walks in the nearby woods where there must surely be some stray rocks lying about beneath the trees. But the child was older and far away now, the tin bucket long since discarded. The family had not taken a trip to the Norman coast since the war began, and although the entrance to the Bois de Boulogne was but ten minutes on foot from the apartment, Sophie was increasingly cautious about venturing any further than the baker’s shop at the corner and did not want to risk an extra outing on top of today’s mission. She would just have to rely on finding stones at her destination.
She noted with relief that Philippe had also gone out earlier that morning, so that she did not need to explain her own departure. Communication was increasingly strained between them and she lacked the energy to think of a lie that might cover her as she pulled open the apartment’s heavy oak door. As long as the child was still with them, they had been united in their plans and resolute in their execution. Their daughter was to find safety, even if it cost Sophie and Philippe their life savings. But once word had got back, nine long weeks after the night they had parted, that her group had made it through the checkpoint at Hendaye and safely crossed into Spain, then their focus dissolved and their unity fractured.
At first, Philippe had sought Sophie’s permission before he sold anything. From the start they had agreed that the silverware, their wedding gift from her mother, each piece so delicately etched with a tracery of vines, was sacrosanct, and then they had agonized together over what was more dispensable. But now she realized what he took only when she noticed it missing. Sitting reading in the salon, she would look up to the marble mantel to check the time and find that the gilded clock with figures of wood nymphs holding up its white-and-black face was not there. Reaching into the china cupboard for a plate onto which she could arrange a meagre meal of boiled potatoes and white beans, she would sense that it seemed less crowded than before and realize that the Sèvres was gone.
These losses were unspoken and Philippe no longer told her of his plans, but she knew that he was probably visiting another dealer that morning. These days that was the only reason he had to leave the apartment. When they first imposed the quotas and he lost his practice, he was out
every day, hurrying down to the Cité on the Métro because Maître Richelieu gave him work clerking in his office. But Philippe could no longer take the risk of the daily trip any more than his former colleague could take the risk of hiring him. He spent his days reading the newspaper and sorting uselessly through his old files. Suspended between their former life and some uncertain future, they seemed for the moment to have abandoned time. Increasingly, Sophie longed for something to disrupt this condition and had begun to think that when a knock came on the door, it would be nothing but a relief.
She just had this last task to complete. She belted her drab-coloured trench coat firmly around her—she would need its strong, deep pockets to carry any stones she did find—and slipped quietly onto the landing. She peered over the wrought-iron banisters down four floors to the hallway, checking that Mme Delisle was not about, sweeping the carpet or polishing the brass newel posts. The hall was empty for the moment and Sophie walked swiftly but silently downstairs. She moved without sound down the last flight, glided across the empty hallway like a ghost, and stepped out into the street.
She walked towards the Métro quickly, attempting to set a pace that was rapid enough to suggest legitimate business but not so hurried as to hint at flight. The day was pleasant, still hot although it was now mid-October, and despite herself, she warmed to the light on her face. From La Muette, the stop where she had safely and thoughtlessly boarded a train so many times before, she took the Métro eastward, keeping her head down so as not to catch anyone’s eye, anxiously scanning not the faces of the other passengers but their equally revealing footwear. She was fearfully looking
for the well-polished leather boots that would belong to either a gendarme or a German officer, but she saw none and forty minutes later arrived without incident at her stop, Père Lachaise.
This is the most famous cemetery in Paris. As she entered the gates, Sophie heard herself saying these words in her head like some sort of tour guide, and she realized that she was talking to her daughter. This is the most famous cemetery in Paris, she continued as she started up one of the beaten dirt paths, home to Sarah Bernhardt, Oscar Wilde, and Marcel Proust. Look, dear, there is the grave of Alfred de Musset, there with the little willow tree. He’s the man our street is named for, a great writer. Privately, she had always thought the tree was ridiculous. The poet had requested that he be buried beneath a willow, and instead of finding some suitable riverbank, his family had put him in Père Lachaise and planted this pathetic specimen above the grave. But Sophie would not share this criticism with her daughter.
This is where France’s great artists are laid to rest, she would continue, the writer Alphonse Daudet is here, so are the painters Géricault and Delacroix, the playwright Beaumarchais, the poetess Anna de Noailles, and Georges Bizet, the composer who created
Carmen
. This is where the Faubourg Saint-Germain comes to a bitter end. That monument holds the bones of the de Guiches. The de Brancovans are here somewhere, the Rothschilds, all the great families. There’s the Comte de Montesquiou, a famous dandy in his day. And look, that’s the grave of Félix Faure, president of the Republic. Died in his mistress’s arms at the height of the Dreyfus affair. Not that you would tell such a thing to a girl not yet twelve, any
more than you could explain how the English writer Oscar Wilde came to be buried in Paris, exiled and disgraced.