2004 short list:
Mme. Proust and the Kosher Kitchen
by Kate Taylor
Doubleday Canada
Mme. Proust and the Kosher Kitchen
Kate Taylor entwines the stories of three women to create a haunting story that spans the twentieth century.
In fin de siècle Paris, Jeanne Proust writes in her diaries of everything, personal and political. But mostly she writes of her son, Marcel, who is plagued by grandiose social ambitions and unfulfilled literary aspirations.
In mid-century Toronto, Sarah Bensimon, who fled the Nazis asa child, now feels alienated from her husband and son, and seeks solace in her kitchen.
And at the turn of the millennium, Marie Prévost pores over Mme. Proust's diaries, finding in them a refuge from unrequited love.
Kate Taylor
Kate Taylor is a Toronto writer and cultural journalist, born in France and raised in Ottawa. Until 2003, she served as theatre critic at The Globe and Mail, winning two Nathan Cohen Awards for her reviews, and now writes an arts column for that paper. She has also contributed to Canadian Art, Applied Arts, and The Arts Today on CBC Radio. Her first book, Painters, a biography of Canadian artists written for children, was published in 1989. Her debut novel, Mme. Proust and the Kosher Kitchen, won the 2003 Commonwealth Writers Award for Best First Book, Canada and Caribbean Region, and the 2003 Canadian Jewish Book Award. She lives in Toronto.
Excerpt from Mme. Proust and the Kosher Kitchen
Inch by inch of asphalt and stone, yard by yard of rubble and soil, they cleared it all, shovelling it into trucks which then dumped their loads into the lake at the east end of the harbour, creating acres of land where one day new streets and buildings would rise. By Remembrance Day, the engineers were breathing down their necks, demanding of the foremen when the work would be done, and on their long shifts the cold and the damp seemed almost unbearable to the men who dug. But once all the wires and pipes were safely exposed, the planking laid over their heads, and the streets reopened to traffic, the diggers discovered that the wind that now whipped down Yonge Street did not blow underground. They felt secure in their newly created cave, and pitied the chaps working north of them in the open cuts up to Eglinton. They were happy with their progress. They had reached Bloor Street before Christmas, right on schedule, and could soon invite the concrete finishers and the electricians to join them underground. By March, the track gangs, who had been working their way up and down the line for almost a year now, were panting to lay the last rails. In May, the new Toronto subway opened.
It ran from Union Station at the southern edge of downtown, not far from the lakeshore, uphill all the way to Eglinton Avenue. It would replace the clanging and shunting of the Yonge streetcar with a smoother and softer vibration, whisking the bankers and stockbrokers home to the tree-lined streets and imposing houses of Rosedale while the secretaries travelled a few stops further north, to the six-storey red-brick apartment buildings on the side streets off Eglinton. It was a huge source of pride to Toronto, for its rival Montreal, long acknowledged as the more important Canadian city, the seat of finance and culture, the port of entry for immigrants, did not have a subway yet. Paris, London, New York—real cities—teemed with underground life and could move millions of inhabitants from place to place without ever coming up for air. Toronto was growing, pushing forward, the war was ancient history, almost ten years now since it had finished, and the future beckoned.
From Mme. Proust and the Kosher Kitchen by Kate Taylor. Published by Doubleday Canada. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.
