In 2003, at the age of 36, Kathleen Flinn was fired from her high-powered corporate job in London. With a little nudge from her boyfriend, she decided this was a sign. It all seemed to point towards doing something her heart was after.

That something was attending the prestigious Le Cordon Bleu cooking school in Paris.

The application was easy and expensive, and within weeks, Flinn was on her way from London to Paris.

It is her Parisian misadventures and the tough road to becoming a chef that are chronicled in her memoirs, The Sharper Your Knife, The Less You Cry: Love, Laughter, And Tears At The World's Most Famous Cooking School.

The book goes behind the scenes to show readers how the school where famous chef Julia Child trained isn't all about glistening table tops and encouraging chefs.

It gets all down and dirty as things go back to basics at the demanding school.

Flinn intersperses these with a peek into France's rich culinary history as well as the challenges of living up to the expectations of a school as exacting as Le Cordon Bleu.

She lives to tell the tale and she narrates it well in parts. But I started losing interest when the recipes with their long lists of ingredients started showing up.

Recipes forming part of a book or those revolving around an author's life are increasingly finding their way into memoirs. These invariably end up slowing the pace of the book and detracting from the main story, which is often a lot more compelling than the recipes.

If you aren't too bothered by them and are looking for a quick and easy read, then this book could work for you. Personally, I like my recipes complete with pictures good enough to drool over.

If you like this, read: Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain (2001, $17.66 with GST, Borders)

Find out what really goes on in the kitchen before sitting down to eat in a chic restaurant. It is hard-hitting, sometimes unpalatable, but definitely a page-turner.

This article was first published in The Sunday Times on June 1, 2008.