Map of Another Town

by M.F.K. Fisher

‘A glowing memoir of Provence’ New York Times

M F K Fisher moved to Aix-en-Provence with her daughters after the Second World War.

In Map of Another Town, she traces the history of this ancient and famous town, known for its tree-lined avenues, pretty fountains and ornate facades.

Beyond the tourist sights, Fisher introduces us to its inhabitants: the waiters and landladies, down-and-outs and local characters - all recovering from the affects of the war in a drastically new France.

A companion piece to The Gastronomical Me', in this memoir Fisher finds herself alone, older and with two small children to care for, while at the same time discovering a sense of belonging and acceptance.

Genres: France, Travel, Nonfiction, Memoir, Food, Biography, History

273 pages, Unknown Binding

First published January 1, 1964

About the author

Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher was a prolific and well-respected writer, writing more than 20 books during her lifetime and also publishing two volumes of journals and correspondence shortly before her death in 1992. Her first book, Serve it Forth, was published in 1937. Her books deal primarily with food, considering it from many aspects: preparation, natural history, culture, and philosophy. Fisher believed that eating well was just one of the "arts of life" and explored the art of living as a secondary theme in her writing. Her style and pacing are noted elements of her short stories and essays.

Reviews

[Jeanette (Ms. Feisty) · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars

Lovely and sometimes lethargic lines to linger over on a long lazy summer Sunday. Dream of faraway France in a long-gone century and reflect on the pleasures and vagaries of expat life. It's not all baguettes and bises, even if you are familiar with the country and fluent in the language.

[Claire · Rating 3 out of 5]

While I usually steer clear of memoirs set in France, M.F.K.Fisher (1908-1992) is a writer I’ve long intended to read. She was an American nonfiction writer whose wrote about food, considering it from many aspects: preparation, natural history, culture, and philosophy.

Fisher lived in Dijon for a few years as a young bride, but now it is 1954 and she is a widow with two young daughters spending a year in Aix-en-Provence at a time when France is still reeling from the effect of the second world war. Fisher too is recovering from raw emotional wounds.

While being in Aix makes her feel alive, a sense of frustration seeps through the pages as she describes feeling largely invisible and worse, looked down upon.

She is keenly aware that the grand dames consider her an ‘outlander’, an emissary from a graceless, culture-less people.

Living here has given her a thick skin, a confidence and an extra sense with which to navigate the world.

Over the years I have taught myself, and have been taught, to be a stranger. A stranger usually has the normal five senses, perhaps especially so, ready to protect and nourish him.

Then there are the extra senses that function only in the subconsciousness. These are perhaps a stranger’s best allies, the ones that stay on and grow stronger as time passes and immediacy dwindles.
It is with these senses that she creates her map of the town, Aix-en-Provence.

She finds just the right words to describe the near indescribable, whether it’s the cafes, the main street or the people, and though all of the characters she writes about have long gone, the edifices remain and it is easy to imagine how this place we live in was back when she inhabited it. In reality, little has changed, except that today it is a ghost town.

After reading the initial chapters, I stopped reading for a couple of months just after the chapters The Gypsy Way and The Foreigner, which were somewhat xenophobic. Then I picked this up again and was relieved to find the next essays as delightful as the debut and way more humorous. I found that Fisher was more entertaining when observing herself than she was observing others.

My favourite essay ‘A Familiar’ didn’t even take place in Aix, it’s a stream-of-consciousness narrative of six hours spent in the train station of Lucerne after being sold a ticket for a non-existent train. Refusing to allow herself to venture outside, she orders a vermouth-gin in the station restaurant to ease her awkwardness.

I would have liked to order at least two more, but although I had to laugh at myself I was afraid that the maid, already somewhat alarmed at my ordering such a potion … a woman alone … would report me to the police who must be somewhere handy in the enormous station.

And in the essay ‘The Unwritten Books’, she visits a cake shop, asking the pastry chef to make a cake, one drawn by her young daughter, a cross cultural hilarity, not to mention the proprietors constant refusal to hear her other request, to provide her with a calendar of culinary events, for which there is only ever one reply, an(other) invitation to visit the calisson factory? Priceless!

A must read certainly if you know and love Aix-en-Provence, this is an outsiders insight into the old city, one who has fallen for its charm, cursed by her inability to meld completely into it. Humorous in some parts, cringworthy in others, overall a delight and superbly descriptive.

[Tripfiction · Rating 4 out of 5]

A love letter to Aix-en-Provence



Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher was an American food writer. Over her lifetime she wrote 27 books and believed that eating well was just one of the “arts of life” and explored this in her writing in the second half of the 20th Century, living in the city with her 2 daughters. In her home country of USA, she is a celebrated food writer.

This book is an assemblage of her multiple experiences of being in Aix and savouring the French way of life, which of course involves food – but as she so eloquently conveys – so much more. She wanders the streets, takes note of the tiniest detail and introduces her readers to the people she encounters.

She discovers – you can feel her glee – a new fangled contraption that skewers hot dogs and slides them into buns (not a hit with her daughters, however). She just delights in her surroundings, in particular the various personal, curious encounters and experiences that make this such a charming read.

The Cours Mirabeau, really, is a stunning street at the heart of the city and anyone who has been to Aix will remember it. It has visual grandeur, atmospheric lustre and a real sense of history. The author informs that it was constructed in 1651 when the royal art of taking the air in public came into vogue. It became an aristocratic promenade. It is populated by fountains, which she observes details and her delight is palpable. You can just sense her pleasure in transposing her experiences onto the page!

It may have been written fairly soon after the end of WW2 but it still has a relevance today. The colours of the environs come through and are still a lure for those who will visit the city. Put the book on your list if you intend to travel to beautiful Aix-en-Provence. And if you have been, then this will transport you back in time, in no time, a perfect choice for #literarytourism!

[Thebooktrail · Rating 4 out of 5]

Visit the locations in the book

A vintage classic – it was first published in 1964 – and now rereleased in a colourful new format. M.F.K. Fisher moved to Aix-en-Provence with her daughters after the Second World War. In Map of Another Town, she traces the history of this ancient and famous town. It’s perhaps the ultimate author guide, but what makes this so interesting is the fact she takes you on her personal journey at the same time.

Fisher writes: ‘Here before me now is my picture, my map, of a place and therefore myself.’

his is an account not just of PRovence and its people, but of MFK Fisher herself. Well-known for her love of food, she is already known for her book The Gastronomical Me which is a companion to this memoir. In that, she wrote of her love of food and it was regardede as Fisher’s gastronomical coming of age. In Map of Another Town, she is now older, with two small children and has a new journey of her life to explore.

Mary Frances Kennedy to give her her full name, was born on July 3, 1908 in Albion, Michigan. She grew up an Episcopalian in a Quaker community. Her book Among Friends takes a look back at this time and its something I definitely want to read now that I’ve ‘met’ her.



This is a wonderful, timeless, guide to the city of Aix en Provence and the surrounding area. It’s a food lover’s delight and mixes the stunning scenery to the food, the people, the atmosphere and even the air they all breathe there. There’s just something about life here in Provence and to discover it through the eyes of such a lady as MFK Fisher is a treat indeed.

You can visit most of the places in the book since it’s based in reality. Her house still stands at 17 Rue Cardinale and although you can’t go inside as it’s a private house and someone else lives there now, you can see it and imagine what went on within. It’s the stories which came from this house that create the book – the wanders through the alleyways, the visit to the market, the coffee at the oldest cafe in Aix. If that’s not enough, there’s a visit back in time to when the Romans walked these streets.

This is some travel guide therefore – an author’s guide but more of an experience of a place and time and a visit through history. The resulting tapestry is one food lovers, readers and travels will gobble up.

[Megan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked up this memoir last summer at The London Review Bookshop, drawn to it mostly because the introduction was by Lauren Elkin who I adore. I also really liked that it had been published in London, so it was a unique book that was special to get there. After I bought it, I read about 20 pages of it in a park next door and kind of forgot I bought it. Recently, I’ve been looking for comforting reads during this pandemic. This light, dreamy memoir fit the bill.

This book is especially perfect if quarantine has left you longing to travel. It’s set in Aix-en-Provence, exploring the city by location, characters, train rides, and memories. The writing is really graceful and breathtaking. Fisher makes moments real with not just strong imagery, but by capturing the magic and the emotions that made them special. She’s great at capturing not just happy moments, but also dark ones. She writes this scene about a carnival and confetti with a familiar darkness I’ve sensed before in my own life, but that she captures so well.

There are definitely some problematic aspects of the book, as it was written 50 years ago. Especially the essay on a young Roma woman sat a little “off” to me in a contemporary context.

I really loved the way she considers how places and memories change overtime. I think that the memoir so interesting because she lived in Provence twice. Her memories and experiences change between the two stays, which makes one think about the way our memories romanticize times, places, and people in our lives. And the way we are pulled back to places with our happiest memories only realized the places have changed and so have we as people.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the 2nd MFK Fisher I’ve tried to dig and we’re just not coming together. It’s undeniable that her writing is good, but I always feel a distance that prevents me from sharing the space with her.

I love Aix en Provence, it’s one of the places that influenced my move to the south of France, and even though Fisher obviously loves it to, I can’t hear the fountains, feel that gorgeous sunlight through this book. I had problems staying interested, leaving it on the bedside table for months on end, and feeling like I was doing homework whenever I returned to its pages. I think casual travelers and Francophiles can skip this one.

[Beth Bonini · Rating 3 out of 5]

When I turned onto Espariat toward the Hotel de Provence I stopped, listening with my sharp ghost-ears to the sound of the water dropping serenely from basin to basin in the Albertas fountain. This time my children would be waiting for me under the faint returning green of the trees on the Cours. The next time, I knew by now, might be any time at all, whether or not the map was exactly true to scale, and plumb, and legible to other eyes than mine. I need not worry about coming back, for I was there anyway.

The famous food writer M.F.K Fisher first lived in France in the late 1920s; then she was living in Dijon with her husband Al Fisher, and during this four year period she fell in love with French cuisine and began developing what would eventually become a significant body of knowledge and expertise for both the cooking and the culture of the country. Later, in 1954 - and then again in 1960 - she came to Aix-on-Provence to live with her two daughters Anne and Mary. It is her memories of Aix which form the basis of a book which combines memoir with travel writing, but definitely skews more toward the personal experience.

There are some descriptions of food in this book - but this is not a book of food writing, and in that sense it is not at all what I expected from a M.F.K. Fisher book. Instead, it is a series of sketches that attempt to capture - in a very personal sense - how Fisher experienced the city of Aix on the two occasions she lived there. Other readers, also familiar with Aix, might recognise her descriptions of Aix's famous fountains, and the ubiquitous presence of the university students, or perhaps the importance of the regional theatres and music festivals, or maybe just the two cafes (the Glacier and the Deux Garcons) she describes as 'havens'. These are the more universal outlines of what she refers to throughout as her own personal 'map' of Aix. But most of the book concerns itself with a more internal landscape, not just of the individuals she mixed with or observed, but also of her emotions whilst living in this place. She refers to herself over and over as a 'ghost', so perhaps you can get a sense of the emotional tenor of the book from that. There is something quite haunted, and haunting, about this memoir.

Although Fisher never goes into any detail about the personal events which made her into a 'ghost', even a brief reading of any potted biography will provide lots of clues: the deaths of her parents, the suicides of her second husband and brother, a divorce from her third husband, and really just a general sense of someone being unmoored by every security-giving relationship other than motherhood. The Aix she describes is an old, distinguished city crowded with ghosts, and perhaps that is why she was drawn to live there - although she also makes much of its various beauties. The damage from World War II is still evident, not so much in the buildings as in the broken bodies and impoverished circumstances of so many of the city's inhabitants. Fisher is not writing horror, but she definitely has the gift for the ghoulish and grotesque and many of the book's most vivid bits of writing are character sketches of the damaged people she mingles with. Algeria's war for independence is also going on during the years she lives in Aix, and she touches on the fear and turbulence it creates in France during the time.

Although I enjoyed her writing style, there was something heavy and depressive about the book; her anxieties and fears were all too evident, and they made for oppressive and even hallucinatory reading. I had to drag myself through this book, to be honest, and that's a pity - because I had been expecting something much more sun-drenched and pleasurable.

[Robert · Rating 3 out of 5]

Aix-en-Provence is a city I knew well after a year’s student stay there in 1962-63 and several visits since. Fischer’s second stay as recounted in the book was only about a year before. She captures this captivating place very well, and with a sort of half off-put fondness that I share. Old Aix is magical and always will be, but in the early 60’s, that troubled time for France was felt most strongly in the South, as post-War de- colonization almost led to a civil war in a country still coming to terms with its WWII horrors. (My rented room in a villa between Aix and Le Tholonet featured a portrait of Marshal Petain.)

[Sarah M · Rating 3 out of 5]

After finding this book in a charity shop and then leaving it on the tube shortly after, I finally bought another copy two years later. The introduction really pulled me in, so I had high hopes for finally getting around to reading the rest of it. Unfortunately, the main content of the book didn't quite live up to expectations, and it was a bit of a slog in places. But the writing is still beautiful, with some memorable passages about Fisher's experiences as an American "ghost" living in Aix en Provence. I'd like to check out some of her culinary writing now.

[Conor McAvoy · Rating 4 out of 5]

MFK Fisher is definitely an acquired taste. She can be a bit mysterious and her writing often doesn’t conform to a usual memoir as in she rarely writes chronologically or gives you details of why or when she did things. But saying all that, her writing is funny, engaging and witty and thoroughly enjoyable.

[Leigh Christy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not my favorite of MFK but still worth the read for the gems of her characterizations of real people seen with clear eyes and the glimpse into the inner workings of a mind and the memories it creates.

[Sarah Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was expecting this book, which I found in a vintage store in Virginia, to be about food, but instead it is about the author’s times living in Aix-En-Provence with her daughters. It is wonderful writing, and includes lovely sketches of the street scapes and fountains. Yes, it is dated, it captures a place and time beautifully.

[Katie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wonderfully atmospheric description of Aix.

[Elizabeth McIntosh · Rating 5 out of 5]

This written map to Fisher’s 1950’s Aix is gorgeous, full of vivid details of the local people and her characteristic reflections on life.