The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry: Love, Laughter, and Tears in Paris at the World's Most Famous Cooking School,   ISBN:9780143114130

Customer Rating: 

I am at a loss to understand the negative reviews which some people submitted for this book. I felt that it was fascinating and very well-written. The school, the other students, the chefs, and her relationship were sharply evoked and delineated; I did not feel that there was excessive attention given to any specific thread, and the information she included about herself and her future husband helped to ground the book and give it some depth. Occasionally books of this genre can seem one-dimensional because you don't have sufficient back-story to see the individual in his or her context. Flinn came across as a real person, quirky and very likeable. It's an excellent book for a foodie, a francophile, or simply someone who likes reading about other people's adventures through life.

Oh, and I also learned how to mince an onion à la façon Cordon Bleu! [...]

Customer Rating: 

This book was so bad I almost had to put it down and quit it while reading. I stuck with it (mainly because it is a short and easy read), but felt pretty disappointed at the end. The book does cover a lot of the insider's view of French cooking, Le Cordon Bleu, etc., but it is so poorly written. Think Lifetime movie about a girl who goes to cooking school. The tone felt so vapid and was such an obnoxious pain to read, I felt like the cover might has well been hot pink and have shoes on the front (and if that type of book is your cup of tea, then you might like this one). I really wanted to like this book, but the writing was so juvenile and felt more like a college student's blog that I really cannot recommend this to anyone.

Customer Rating: 

This is a charming and pleasant book. Kathleen Flinn does a marvelous job of evoking Paris in all its historical and 21st-century glory and uniqueness, and of evoking the wonderfully French speech of her chef professors at the Le Cordon Blue cooking school in Paris. It's easy to "feel yourself there" inside the culinary classrooms, experiencing all the excitement, fear, and curious wonderment that Kathleen, and all of the students, do. We also get to experience Paris through her various living quarters and through outings with visiting friends and fellow students. She also marvelously describes and evokes day-to-day life in Paris, especially for someone with only a modest, yet steadily improving, command of the French language.

The one thing I disliked about the book, and the reason I gave it 4 stars rather than 5, is the overwhelmingly repetitive presence of forced metaphors. In each of the 28 short chapters, the reader is subjected to at least one, and sometimes more than one, juvenile and sophomoric metaphor. Things along the lines of "I realized timing is important in cooking just like it is in relationships. If you try to take the cake out of the oven -- or commit to your sweetheart forever -- too soon, you end up with a sorry mess." OK, I made that one up, but you get the idea. If Kathleen Flinn can rid herself of this writing flaw entirely (perhaps acquired in some Journalism 101 seminar?), she can become a truly excellent and intriguing writer.

Overall, however, I quite enjoyed this book and feel that I've had the experience of living and learning in Paris for several months without actually having done so. Ms. Flinn does such a good job at letting the reader "be there" that I actually teared up when the course of study was ending. Now that is the sign of good and personable writing!

Customer Rating: 

Four of us read this book over the holidays and really enjoy her story! She really had some aweful things to get through. Good heart felt book. We were cheering for her all the way through.

Customer Rating: 

A software executive gets laid off, fulfills her life dream of attending Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, and finds true love - all in about a year. And gets a book deal? That's a lot of life-changing events in a short time.

The story was interesting, but not for the faint of heart. The details of deboning fowl and fish, working with marrow and blood, and removing eyes are brutal. They are tempered with stories of classmates, homeless people, and romance.

All in all, this was a good book. But read the paper copy. Hearing recipes read - with metric equivalents, no less - is not compelling listening material, even for foodies.