This is the kind of book which sounds like it should make good reading. Ann(-Marie) Mah is a Chinese American who has married Calvin, an American career diplomat, and in their 5 year marriage thus far, has accompanied him on postings to Beijing and Washington DC. Now she comes to Paris with him, still as the trailing spouse (her term). Engaged after 6 months of meeting, and married a year after, Mah
“quit my job in book publishing, the only work I’d ever known, a career I’d adored for six years, and leaped – into nothing” (p30).
Mah tells us of struggles as trailing spouse expat – the sacrifice of family, job, identity. In Beijing, she struggled even more because her face proclaims her as Chinese, but she identifies as American, and she is expected to speak Mandarin fluently, so her accented Mandarin results in “hostile disappointment”, without the
“privileges granted automatically to my Caucasian friends and husband, the respect offered because of their foreign features alone” (p32)
and how she was sometimes mistaken as her husband’s translator, and
“Sometimes they assumed worse” (p32).
However, Mah manages to get some work reviewing Beijing restaurants for an expat publication, only to have to start all over again in Calvin’s next posting in DC, then in Paris. (By the way, this is already the best of her migrant/expat observations; it grows increasingly lack lustre as the book develops.)
Shortly after they arrive in Paris, Calvin gets a posting to Baghdad for a year, but it is an
“unaccompanied post – meaning no spouses, no children, no family” (p47)
which Mah herself admits having reacting over-emotionally to. She makes a huge deal out of missing Calvin, being homesick, and somehow seems to think that the migrant experience of being far from family and loved ones is an experience which is exceptional to her. One year apart (that too, with 3 vacations of 3 weeks each that Calvin takes to see her) seems to her to be a massive sacrifice and hardship, requiring such courage, resilience, and bravery from her. She seems not to have considered that many migrants have to be indefinitely separated from loved ones and in genuinely wretched conditions, unlike her plush, petted, privileged life in Paris as a diplomat’s wife, with visits home to parents in California, visits from her husband, limitless mobility to go anywhere she likes and resultant jaunts to various regions of France which interest her. It is not that being away from the person you love is ever easy, but her lack of perspective is perhaps difficult to conjure up much sympathy for.
Every chapter focuses on one region and a food of the region, and concludes with some recipes. Streak and fries for Paris, Andouillette (tripe) in Troyes, Crepes in Breton and Brittany, Soupe au pistou in Provence, and so on. The writing is not exactly bad, but is not interesting either – which is curious, given the author insistently regards herself as a writer and has always worked in the publishing industry – the writing style is fairly pedestrian stuff. There are nice parts where she explains the provenance of foods:
“Buckwheat is a plant native to East Asia. It came to Western Europe in the twelfth century (some sources say later) , travelling in the food sacks and saddle bags of soldiers fighting in the Crusades. In fact, the French word for buckwheat – sarrasin – is the same one used during the Middle Ages to refer to Muslims; doubtless there was a racially tinged connection between ble noir – the darker flour made from sarrasin – and the darker-skinned immigrants who imported it” (p69).
However, for most part, the writing is lacking, perhaps just because the thought processes are so lacking in nuance, to the point of superficiality: such as when she meets a new friend for lunch, and the lady agrees to share all the dishes, Mah writes,
“I knew we would be friends – not just lunching acquaintances but real, secret-swapping, worry-soothing, laughter-exchanging friends – when she agreed with beaming enthusiasm to share everything“ (p56).
Either she is being flippant, or else extremely naïve, to imagine true friendship can be predicted and guaranteed merely by willingness to share food.
The diasporic, expat life should be very interesting to read about, particularly from the perspective of a 2nd generation Chinese American in France, but this book offers only the most surface and predictable of observations, nothing original, nothing fresh, lacking depth and analysis. There isn’t even much reflection on how different expats of different nationalities are received by the French, and very little reflection on French hospitality. The novel is very self-absorbed instead: Mah makes much of her love and marriage to Calvin, which she puts front and centre of her life, she is over anxious, easily peeved, she makes a big deal out of her tedious, first world problems. Increasingly the reader is left wondering why the marvellous, loving, desirable, perfect Calvin would want to marry this smug, dull woman, so wrapped up in her own limited little bubble despite being given access to such a vast world of opportunities. It is beyond belief that she intended to represent herself thus, but had she intended to depict herself as a run-of-the-mill personality with more ambition than ability, she could hardly have done a better job. The food related discussions are not without interest to fellow foodies, but the personality of the author is fairly key in such travel/expat writings, and it is not that there is much to dislike about the author, there just is so little to like or admire or feel warmed by. Perhaps this read suffers from a singular lack of charm? O la la!
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