Chez Moi | Granta

  • Published: 05/12/2013
  • ISBN: 9781846275708
  • Granta Books
  • 272 pages

Chez Moi

Agnès Desarthe

Myriam’s decision to open a restaurant in her Paris flat is characteristically unexpected and transforms her life in a curious way. For six years, Myriam has been living in self-imposed exile, cut off from her cool, reserved husband and from her son, and the opening night of Chez Moi is typically desolate. But little by little, Myriam’s mouth-watering dishes draw people in, first the florist from across the road, followed by the school children tempted by a four-euro lunch, and then Ben, the most unflappable and devoted of waiters. As the restaurant sizzles towards success, figures and feelings from Myriam’s past also begin to emerge, gradually reawakening her appetite for life, both the bitter and the sweet. Simmering with stories, recipes, observations and dreams, Chez Moi serves up a painfully adult story, with an irresistible sprinkling of wonder and magic.

Riveting

Claudia Roden, Jewish Book Week

An uplifting read for anyone who loved Chocolat or Babette's Feast

Kate Figes, Guardian

The charm flows and recipes entice but we savour far more spice than schmaltz

Boyd Tonkin, Independent

The Author

Agnés Desathe was born in Paris in 1966 and has written many books for children and teenagers, as well as adult fiction. She won the Prix du Livre Inter in 1996 for Un Secret sans importance and has had two previous novels translated into English: Five Photos of My Wife (Flamingo, 2001), which was short-listed for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and the Jewish Quarterly Fiction Prize, and Good Intentions (Flamingo, 2002).

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From the Same Author

The Foundling

Agnès Desarthe, translated by Adriana Hunter

Jerome is a calm man – at least, that’s what he’d always believed. But when his daughter’s boyfriend dies in an accident, he is overwhelmed by unexpected grief. As he struggles to make sense of the loss and his own reaction to it, he finds himself assailed by emotions and memories he has allowed to lie dormant: the residual feelings for his ex-wife; a baffling new attraction to a stranger; a precarious friendship with a retired policeman; and, above all, unsettling questions about his own past and the family he never knew. In returning to the forests of his childhood and the darkest nights of the second world war, Jerome gradually, painfully begins to piece together the truth of his own origins and the tragedy that his adoptive parents tried to bury.