false http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1171273133m/94082.jpg 94082 1 What is the spell that M.F.K. Fisher casts over enchanted readers who, privileged, dip into her timeless culinary masterworks and occasional fiction? With this volume of never-before-published letters, fans who know M.F.K. only by such gustatory marvels as <I>The Art of Eating</I> and <I>How to Cook a Wolf</I> may now draw closer to the life--the loves and loves lost, the travails and travels--that inspired this woman of unique appetites, wit, and tastes. <p> In 1929, shortly after she turned 21, Mary Frances Kennedy married Alfred Young Fisher, and together they sallied forth to France. There her senses were freed, her artist's eye and culinary tastes refined, and she began a correspondence with family and friends that would become the raw material for many books to come; those first three years in southern France sharpened her eye for the telling moment, the curious detail. <P> This compendious collection of letters (which includes 32 pages of photos from her family collection) is divided into chronological blocks, introduced by brief biographical synopses. But nothing relates Fisher's rich life as poignantly as the voice that graces her letters: "Things go well here," she wrote in February 1950, having returned to the decrepit family ranch in California to care for her dying father and support her two daughters, "and the new cook, a quiet firm motherly farm-woman, promises to be just about what we need (...although I am still shuddering at one of our opening remarks, when I told her we all like to eat lots of fresh vegetables and she said, 'Oh, ja... t'ings like potato pancakes and sauerkraut...')." <p> Anne Lamott's tender forward to <I>A Life in Letters</I> is a panegyric in recognition of M.F.K. Fisher's shameless delight in and worship of earth's bounty, a balm to our fat-phobic, diet-dazed sensibilities. "She was," Lamott writes, "just about the last of the food people who did not get caught up in any modern madness, insisting instead on staying in the luxuriousness of taste and texture and communion." As these letters prove, it was a good recipe for a long life, filled with grace and gratitude. 90692 11 1997 M.F.K. Fisher: A Life in Letters : Correspondence 1929-1991 total:30|5:8|4:11|3:11|2:0|1:0| 30 117 50 3 5 0 false false Tue Apr 28 18:41:19 -0700 2009 Tue Apr 28 18:44:28 -0700 2009 5 0 false false Wed Apr 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Thu Mar 26 21:49:38 -0700 2009 Thu Apr 23 10:23:28 -0700 2009 4 0 false false Mon May 14 14:24:51 -0700 2007 Mon May 14 14:25:09 -0700 2007 0 0 false false Mon Nov 23 20:58:53 -0800 2009 Mon Nov 23 20:59:00 -0800 2009 4 0 false false Tue Nov 17 06:15:06 -0800 2009 Tue Nov 17 06:15:06 -0800 2009 0 0 false false Sat Nov 07 14:30:42 -0800 2009 Sat Nov 07 14:30:42 -0800 2009 3 0 false false Sun Aug 30 11:45:46 -0700 2009 Sun Aug 30 11:45:46 -0700 2009 3 0 false false Sun Aug 16 17:15:49 -0700 2009 Sun Aug 16 17:15:49 -0700 2009 3 0 false false Sat Jun 20 12:40:56 -0700 2009 Sat Jun 20 12:40:56 -0700 2009 3 0 false false Wed Dec 01 00:00:00 -0800 1999 Wed May 20 08:40:15 -0700 2009 Wed May 20 08:40:23 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Tue May 19 11:11:06 -0700 2009 Tue May 19 11:11:06 -0700 2009 4 0 false false Sun May 17 10:47:50 -0700 2009 Sun May 17 10:47:50 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Sun May 10 12:50:48 -0700 2009 Sun May 10 12:50:48 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Tue May 05 15:56:04 -0700 2009 Tue May 05 15:56:04 -0700 2009 3 0 false false Thu Apr 02 12:03:42 -0700 2009 Thu Apr 02 12:03:42 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Fri Feb 27 06:58:15 -0800 2009 Fri Feb 27 06:58:15 -0800 2009 5 0 false false Thu Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Tue Feb 24 22:40:41 -0800 2009 Tue Feb 24 22:40:55 -0800 2009 4 0 false false Sat May 09 14:32:12 -0700 2009 Thu Feb 12 08:12:33 -0800 2009 Sat May 09 14:32:12 -0700 2009 3 0 false false Wed Feb 11 20:46:08 -0800 2009 Wed Feb 11 20:46:08 -0800 2009 4 0 false false Sun Jan 18 10:08:01 -0800 2009 Sun Jan 18 10:08:01 -0800 2009 http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=94082