Cooking For Picasso

Destined to be a book club favourite - an utterly charming and entirely delicious novel of love, art and food, with a dash of French Riviera sunshine.

Juan-les-Pins, the French Riviera, 1936: Ondine is a sixteen-year old girl working at her family’s cafe when she is called upon to cook for Picasso, who has secretly rented a nearby villa. Picasso is successful, powerful, virile - yet he is also a man beset by his own demons, and he’s at a great crossroads in his personal and professional life. The spirited Ondine is just beginning to discover her own talents and appetites, and she quickly blossoms in many ways from her encounter with Picasso - each inspires the other.

New York, 2016: Celine, Ondine’s American granddaughter, decides to embark on a journey to the French Riviera in a quixotic quest to do what her fragile mother Julie is no longer able to do - that is, to find out what really happened when her grandmother Ondine crossed paths with the great Picasso …and possibly recover a lost family treasure. To carry out her quest, Celine takes her mother’s place in a cooking class at an elegant Provencal farmhouse, run by Gil, a mercurial English master chef who is wildly talented but doesn’t suffer fools and has demons of his own.

Set against the sensual sun-infused Cote d'Azur, Cooking for Picasso is a captivating, wise and entirely delicious novel of desire, trust, art and food - and the important choices that we all face in our journey towards love, success and joie de vivre.