Immoveable Feast: A Paris Christmas

by John Baxter

Book Overview

A witty cultural and culinary education, Immoveable Feast is the charming, funny, and improbable tale of how a man who was raised on white bread--and didn't speak a word of French--unexpectedly ended up with the sacred duty of preparing the annual Christmas dinner for a venerable Parisian family.

Ernest Hemingway called Paris a moveable feast--a city ready to embrace you at any time in life. For Los Angeles-based film critic John Baxter,...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0061562335
• ISBN13: 9780061562334
• Release Date: September 2008
• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.62 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 4.9" x 7.1"

Customer Reviews

Feast for the Imagination

Baxter has a wonderfully eclectic mind that will start you off with a shopping list in Paris and end up in the memory of a long ago escapade with a former girlfriend, wife, or fellow writer, as he prepares a most spectacular Christmas meal for his extended French inlaws, all the more remarkable that he (an Australian) should be asked to cook the meal by a family steeped in the culinary and social history of France. The perfect holiday read, or for any winter moment, when you want to curl up and escape fora few hours, not to mention that he gives you interesting historical bits about the various items on his Christmas menu. What distinguishes this from the many other romantic memoirs of Paris now popular, is that it takes you so much further afield (as far as Mumbai, India). The only reason I was glad to get to the end was to be able to share it with others.

Moving book

I love the author's style of writing so much that after I am done with this review I am going to buy his other two books. It's a book that I cannot put down and eagerly turn the page to see what transpires next.

Xmas PiggyFest in Paris

Xmas PigggyFest in Paris Ernest Hemingway called Paris "a moveable feast" - a city ready to embrace you at any time in your life when you feel able to return its embrace. For Los Angeles-based film critic John Baxter, that moment came when he fell in love with the only French woman who can't cook and impulsively moved to Paris to marry her. As a test of his love, his in-laws charged him with cooking the next Christmas banquet--for eighteen people in their ancestral family home. And he has been dong it ever since As a bon vivant with an insider's perspective on the City of Light he is regularly sought out for advice on the city's best markets, restaurants, cheese shops and boulangeries-questions that lead to lengthy, anecdote-filled riffs but the question that silences him is "Where can I get a Christmas dinner in Paris?" The answer: almost impossible. That set him to thinking about his own Paris Christmases. IMMOVEABLE FEAST recalls with great joy his growth from a nearly mute English-speaking diner to Père Noel with an apron as he passionately plans and prepares sumptuous annual feast after feast. This perfect stocking stuffer will inspire you to save at least one American turkey from extinction.