K-SCORE: 81
Author: Kathleen Flinn
Spoiler Level: Minor
It’s exceedingly rare for me to read memoir and therefore I can’t proclaim to be anything close to an expert in the genre, but really, it’s all writing. Stories true or false or somewhere in between exists for assorted reasons, are best evaluated on their own terms, and appreciated like the creations of a French chef, in-the-moment, with respect, and with love.
“ ten parts personal history, three parts tour of Paris, one part culinary history, and one part recipe collection”
The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry chronicles author Kathleen Flinn’s time at the famous Parisian cooking school, Le Cordon Bleu. It’s ten parts personal history, three parts tour of Paris, one part culinary history, and one part recipe collection. Because it’s a slice cut from Flinn’s actual life, it didn’t need to follow any specific structure, so the ensemble is fine. I like reading about food; even more I like reading about people. Flinn’s love of both come together like a masterful four-course meal.
“moments are not going to last long enough to overwhelm, nor will they leave much of an aftertaste”
Her writing style is as simple as a vegetable soup. She’s not afraid to serve the complex events of a four-hour cooking class, a Le Cordon Bleu exam, an entire day, a fateful vacation of hers, or the complex interconnections of her friends in just a few small portions and then move on. If she didn’t want to fiddle with techniques of language in the same way a chef might fiddle with flavors, this was the way to go - fall back onto an established method that works. The memoir is palatable and digestible. Any individual moment may be interesting to you or not, funny or not, emotionally affecting or not, but any which way you slice it, those moments are not going to last long enough to overwhelm, nor will they leave much of an aftertaste. Flinn packs a lot of liquid punch into her little story.
“the story of her life at this time stand, simmer in its own juices, without as much editorializing after she was essentially finished”
The problems I had were the same kind of problems I might have with any piece of fiction I chew up. Many of the connections between Flinn’s experiences in a given chapter and her worldly wisdom (usually the last paragraphs of any section) are overdone. She’s cheating when she tells me what it all means, and especially cheating when she’s telling me how much she developed as a person from her experience at Le Cordon Bleu. Not that I wasn’t convinced that the experience was very affecting for her, and not that the writing wasn’t infused with that scent, ehem, sense, but she would have been better off letting the story of her life at this time stand, simmer in its own juices, without as much editorializing after she was essentially finished.
Also, she has too many characters. I was so interested in her evolving dynamics with Chef Gaillard that I wanted more. I could have done without the bites off the lives of a half dozen of her cooking-school friends, old work acquaintances, Mike friend-of-friends of which I gleaned little and eventually lost track, and Parisian semi-strangers. Could be that Flinn has too many trivial relationships in her actual life. She does a good job of sizing people up, and she can dig into their complexities if she takes the time, but often she didn’t - she’s quickly accepting of others, and wants to believe all perspectives are valuable, even when the clashing characters create conflicts too complex for that kind of evaluation.
My personal cup of tea would have called for more details about the chefs’ expertises. I wanted to scrape the bottom of the pan for all the little French culinary techniques Flinn put in there, yet after I was done I was left not-quite satiated. Though what she does present, from how to effectively use caul fat to how to properly butcher rabbits, was well done, and even made me wish I could casually attend the classes, even with my comparably moderate love of cooking.
There’s a lot on the menu though. International travel and the accompanying blending of cultures, stories about pursuing passions/dreams versus taking the kinds of thankless jobs of responsible people, a few very choice glimpses of the history of Le Cordon Bleu, various dishes, and Julia Child, actual recipes (which I read all the way through for some reason even though I wasn’t making anything), the pungent personalities of French chefs and competitive culinary students, challenges of foreign languages, and a love story so mild and sweet it bordered on not-a-story - she and Mike were just in love and happy the whole way. I really felt I understood Kathleen Flinn during this timeline, the advantages of her lifestyle and conflicts at play.
Oddly, the most lasting impression I had from The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry is actually that, in spite of memoirs tending to be short and the fact that they’re almost certainly easier to write than many other books, they’re actually quite risky. I liked Kathleen Flinn. She struck me as a good person. Our views didn’t align on everything; I feel she’s probably the kind of woman I’ve known my whole life, falling backwards into success, largely ignorant of opportunities or the ease with which she makes friends; probably a bit of a blind optimist who naively thinks life will always just work out perfectly if you follow your heart. But that’s okay. I appreciate her perspective and feel she gave it to me honestly. … That’s not how I feel about everyone. I kept trying to imagine reading a memoir for a person I didn’t respect, of which there are many. I’d be reviewing the story and also the strength of character of the real man or woman author. Yikes. Make no mistake about it, if I thought Flinn was an awful human being, I would have likened her and her book to the aftereffects of too much Taco Bell. See? Memoirs are courageous. But I don’t and I didn’t.
The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry is savory and sweet all at once. Flinn knew that metaphor with the onions was spectacular, so made it her title. Good call. And there’s a lot of little stories about a very real person following her dreams and generally leading a successful life in her mid-thirties that I found at times informative, emotional, or inspirational.
Ugh. I feel sick. That review was so fat with food idioms, comparisons, references, and puns that it’s overpowering. Oh hell, it’s still going - boiling over - no. NO!