The Hundred-Foot Journey by Richard C. Morais

I love book clubs. I run two with my very dear friend Carol (of which there are very few members… just like we like it), and I constantly seek out new ones to join just to look at their to-read list before whittling it down to four or five every few months. But here’s the truth: I’m really bad at reading things on a schedule. I don’t know what it is about reading assignments that does it. I used to be an administrator for a large system that involved extensive, mind-bending classroom scheduling as a living, very successfully, but when Carol tells me we have a book…. Oh, say, The Hundred-Foot Journey by Richard C. Morais due at the end of the month in August, my brain says that it’s due at the start of February. You can probably see why we don’t have a lot of members (sorry, Carol).

If I find a book that grabs me, really grabs me, like Perfume or It Was Me All Along, I get it done in a day or two, but sometimes I can really love a book and still take months to finish it (I’m looking at you, G. R. R. Martin). The Hundred Foot-Journey was like that for me. I really did like it! I thought it was an excellent, realistic story about food (my favorite subject) and the restaurant business set partially in and then largely themed after one of my very favorite places to read about (India). Hell, it was my idea to read it!

It was just a bit chewy for me, for whatever reason, though. I sat on the last 10% in my kindle for months, literally five months. There were portions of the book I blazed through, but then there were sections – I can't even properly define which ones – that made me lethargic in picking it back up.

Carol and I went to see the movie together, as we often intend to do for book-movies, and it was an interesting thing. We were more divided and somewhat confused by this movie more than any others we have seen in the past. Having finally finished those last ten percent of pages and read the acknowledgements, I see this book was intended to be a movie from the start (also that the author is close friends with Kazuo Ishiguro, which is pretty cool). That makes a lot of sense! What does not make sense to me is how very different the book was from the movie – the things they left out and the odd relationship plots they added. However, I will save that for another post or possibly a vlog.

I was often hungry reading the book (when I wasn’t looking up culinary terms), but I suppose in many ways I found the book difficult to think of tenderly. I readily admit that I can be a perfectionist at times, so not understanding certain terms didn't feel like an option for me considering how prominent they became over time. That meant that for all the clever little French words and terms they threw into the mix to sound authentic or smart? They just took me out of the story. Since cooking and France were such enormously key parts to the plot, it was difficult to be swept away when having to constantly learn one-time-use words. If I hadn't been reading on a kindle that syncs to Wikipedia I'm not sure I would have finished when I did.

All that to say, I definitely learned a lot from The Hundred-Foot Journey. There were quotes in the book that I loved. Such gems as…

“My dear man, a gourmand is a gentleman with the talent and fortitude to continue eating even when he is not hungry.”

(and)

“Never forget a snob is a person utterly lacking in good taste.”  

Overall, I recommend this book if you are interested in the restaurant business; although not necessarily in food writing since it is largely about the politics of having a successful (or failing) restaurant. I would, also, recommend it if you love France. The book is made for lovers of France – especially if you're familiar with the language itself. However, if you like food writing, pure and simple, or stories of India or family sagas? You may like other books more.

The Hundred-Foot Journey gets solid marks from me for what it was, but I may not reach for it again any time soon. Still, I'm left with wanting to try Ammi’s fish stew,  to visit all the places they saw in their adventure as a family. I want to pick mushrooms with Hassan. I want to meet his noisy Papa. I want to encourage Mehtab. It’s a good story about good people in a good family doing well, and there’s something to be said for that.

If you've read this book or seen this movie, let me know what you think. There's a lot of room for discussion!