Appetite for Life, a biography of Julia Child

Appetite for Life isn't terrible terrible, nor completely amateurish, self-indulgent, and scatter-brained, but it comes close. A book like this really makes you appreciate good old, everyday, professional writing. On one page, Theodore H. White is "Teddy;" on the next, he's "Theodore White." There must be a thousand people mentioned in the book, many of them including some completely Julia Child-free trivia about who their third cousin was and who he worked for. You've got to hand it to the author, Noel Riley Fitch, she's a good researcher. The trouble is that she doesn't seem very concerned with being interesting. It's like she took notes for five years then dumped it all down into the book. She loves using square brackets in quotations.

I know this isn't a very good review. But I just had to say something.