“Un Déjeuner à La Campagne”, came out in late spring but was born nearly three years ago in the summer of 2021. In my mind then, it was a very different book. I’d imagined a kind of almanac of celebrations from cultures and religions all over the world and the title was “Festins”; Feasts. My aim for the original book was to give easy flavour and menu gateways into non-French food cultures. For many reasons, mostly involving Covid exhaustion (after three years, it finally got me, and got me good), I also wanted to write it jointly with another, much younger author. There was a lot of to-ing and fro-ing with Hachette, but in the end logistics and numbers just didn’t stack up.
We were crawling out of the pandemic, not quite measuring the collective PTSD now properly hitting home. There had been an exodus of Parisians to the countryside and, notably, to the beautiful Perche region of Normandy, where I was living. My clever editor, Lisa, suggested simply keeping it all in my suddenly most desireable chez moi, and I changed the direction and structure - still a year of “Festins”, but dropping the multicultural theme, and all set in and around my home.
Great idea! The trouble was, I was not holding jolly festins, or any feasts of any kind whatsoever.
Suffering from Long Covid, fixing breakfast for myself was already a triumph and my anxiety was back with a vengeance. I was certainly less broke than I’d been at various periods over the past fifteen years, but was renovating an old house on a shoestring, with all the delights that brings. I was trying to divorce, but was bafflingly (then, I am now thoroughly unbaffled) still caught up with, a man whose tastes and habits in food were, in France and to me, a social and gastronomic wasteland. (I’ll write more about those dishes - best served cold and in their mostly un-chewable state - when I get to my 2021 book, “La Cuisine Véggie et Végane”. Here’s the cover, note the Stockholm Syndrome smile. )
Still working this one out. :)
When the driving concept of a new cookbook becomes misaligned with my life, tastes or curiosity of the moment, very quickly , the book meets a dead end. Of course this can also happen from the publisher’s point of view, for more commercial reasons – the book doesn’t fit the market, or their catalogue - and it feels much more painful. It’s a rejection, no matter the motivation. Pitching, crafting, testing an idea, it’s all a delicate dance, and when it leads nowhere with a publisher, not taking it personally and processing the disappointment quickly are skills you have to learn along with a skin you have to thicken if you want to keep on making cookbooks - or any books you’d like to see published for that matter. And, as I get older, after years of magazine writing - often contorted to fit “markets” increasingly alien to me - complete authenticity feels like the only way forward.
It was then that brilliant editor Lisa came up with the most evocative title, “Un Déjeuner à La Campagne”. This is rare. Usually I have the title, or a version of it, which either sticks or is then moulded by my team as the book evolves. Sometimes it’s a creative wrangle, sometimes downright conflict. Again, with great age, and many, many books (literally) under my belt, comes the wonderful ability to leave ego out of such conversations.
In its English translation, “Lunch in the country” loses the dreamy magic of the French words. It feels a bit stiff and old-fashioned, conjuring up frilly, Cotswolds-y , organic-everything or crowded pubs with cold cuts, weak soup and damp spaniels (not that there’s anything to dislike in either scenario). In French, the living is easier, slower. And “Un Déjeuner à La Campagne » seemed instantly romantic, rolling off the tongue in languorous and delicious way. It reflects, I find, the more egalitarian accessibility we have here to infinite types of landscapes, climates and food and hints at the art de vivre à la française which threads through and ties them together.
With the solid premise brought by the title and an audience identified, I started thinking about the third and fourth sides of my book’s frame - its visual style and content. More on that in my next “Un Déjeuner” post.
Wonderful! Love the title and very interesting to read the evolution xx
Excellent to read about your hopes and plans for the future. Best wishes. x