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Here are twenty treasures from M. F. K. Fisher. Written over the years, laced with new reflections and asides, these pieces (some never before published) are among the most entrancing that we have yet had from this rare and magical writer.
She writes of growing up in Whittier, California, of secret palaces (a six-year-old's delight in "the wonderland of quiet elegance" of a Los Angeles ice cream parlor and in the plush, cool grandeur of the Mission Inn beyond the neighboring hills and vinyards) and of private ghettoes (the isolation of being the only Episcopalian family in an enclave of Quakers).
She relives the pangs of young hunger at the hands of loving but parsimonious godparents and the blissful torpor, years later, of being overfed by a mad waitress in a famous Burgundian inn.
She recalls the trance-like feeling of putting out to sea, the intimacy and languor of life on a freighter, and the antics of fellow passengers. And she celebrates the gaudy splendor of the Gare de Lyon. ("No other station in the world manages so mysteriously to cloak with compassion the anguish of departure and the dubious ecstasies of return and arrival.")
She re-creates the sensuous rhythm of days spent in two ancient kitchens in Provence, "each with its own smells, its own views into that world and into myself," and she conjures up all the erratic, explosive, and musical street scenes that measure her days one winter in the Rue Brueys in Aix.
"Anything can be a lodestar in a person's life," M. F. K. Fisher writes - and here in this surprising collection we encounter particularly diverse and delightful points of reference - from faucets that spout red and white wine in the master bedrooms of a Dijon hotel to a primitive Provençal cure for warts to the sounds of the eucalyptus dying outside her house in the Sonoma Valley.
To read this book is to enter into the memories of M. F. K. Fisher - places, images, feelings, flavors, encounters that have played a mysterious part in the shaping of an extraordinary writer.
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Previews available in: English
Subjects
Cookery, Biography, Essays (single author), CookingPeople
M. F. K. Fisher (1908-)Places
California, FranceShowing 5 featured editions. View all 5 editions?
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1
As They Were
November 2001, Blackstone Audiobooks
Audio Cassette
in English
- Unabridged edition
0786120509 9780786120505
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- Created April 29, 2008
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April 29, 2011 | Edited by OCLC Bot | Added OCLC numbers. |
October 4, 2010 | Edited by WorkBot | merge works |
April 14, 2010 | Edited by Open Library Bot | Linked existing covers to the edition. |
December 8, 2009 | Edited by ImportBot | link works |
April 29, 2008 | Created by an anonymous user | Imported from amazon.com record |