Martine Bailey’s "An Appetite for Violets," the movie

Featured at My Book, The Movie: An Appetite for Violets by Martine Bailey.

The entry begins:

My mystery novel An Appetite for Violets takes the reader on a gastronomic journey through Europe in the 1700s, in the company of a feisty young cook. When writing it, I visualized the movie so often that my copy of screenwriter Robert McKee’s Story fell to pieces from daily use.

Forget the casting, my first question is: who is going to make the food? In this movie the food has to be the beautiful, from the health foods served at that newly invented Parisian phenomenon – the ‘Restaurant’ - to the vast sugar temples created for banquets and even a life-size figure made of marzipan. I studied historic food with TV consultant Ivan Day, who created the food for P D James’s Pride & Prejudice inspired Death Comes to Pemberley, so Ivan heads my team.

My heroine, Biddy Leigh is a sharp, warm-hearted cook, torn from her English country house kitchen to travel (and cook) her way to Italy. I’d give her role to earthy and naturalistic...[read on]

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My Book, The Movie: An Appetite for Violets.

--Marshal Zeringue