Book Review – “The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry.”

I wasn’t sure what to expect when I received a copy of Kathleen Flinn’s book, The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry: Love, Laughter, and Tears at the World’s Most Famous Cooking School to review.  I was pleasantly surprised – this is a thoughtful, easy-to-read book with a message that certainly resonated with me:  enjoy life as you go along, instead of always straining ahead for the next goal.

Flinn was working as a well-paid corporate manager, stationed in England, when her company unceremoniously laid her off.  With the encouragement of her then-boyfriend and future husband, instead of heading back to the U.S., she took part of her severance pay and headed to Paris to fulfill a long held goal:  to attend the Cordon Bleu cooking school.  The book recounts her experiences during that year, both at school and in her private life.  At the end of each chapter, she provides a recipe or two, but that is not the main reason for buying the book.

The characters are sympathetic, and Flinn seems like a nice person, someone I’d like to get to know.  She manages to elicit compassion in the reader for some genuinely unlikeable characters, and shares stories of her personal life with taste and tact – no tawdry and unnecessary drama or X-rated tales, something that I am NOT looking for in a book of this type.

As for what Flinn goes through, the question should be, what doesn’t go through?  Language difficulties, snobs, saboteurs, house guests from hell, a wedding, and to top it off, a kidney infection that almost derails her graduation from the Cordon Bleu.  But she keeps on with focus and determination.

Flinn is a delightful writer, and I hope to read more of her work in the future.