Written in her fine prosaic style as a series of vignettes, this rewarding book recounts the life and adventures of respected writer Mary Fisher during her travels in America and Europe. The events are filled with wonderful details of people, places, foods, and thoughts, through decades of her life.
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"Very nice and enjoyable selection of essays from a renowned food writer. Her writing is very rich - so rich that I had to take them one story at a time. I also enjoyed the bemused quality present in many of her essays. I look forward to reading more from her." — Erin (4 out of 5 stars)
"Very nice and enjoyable selection of essays from a renowned food writer. Her writing is very rich - so rich that I had to take them one story at a time. I also enjoyed the bemused quality present in many of her essays. I look forward to reading more from her."
“Here are the voluptuous meals recalled by a woman who savored not only the food and wine but every detail of setting and nuance of conversation. Here, too, are meditations on travel by freighter…And here are the vivid evocations of places.”
“To my mind, As They Were contains some of the best writing M.F.K. Fisher has ever done.”
“In a properly run culture, Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher would be recognized as one of the great writers this country has produced in this century.”
“A breath of poetry wraps us as she relives for us a lifetime…She is the attentive spectator of her own life as well as its narrator.”
“She deserves the widest possible audience…The restaurants, hotels and markets she visits are aswarm with people and things, all of which she describes in fine detail, making the reader taste and hear and smell and see as few other writers can…Wherever she is, wherever she goes, she is grand company.”
“Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher is a national treasure. For nearly fifty years she has been writing rare, fine prose about so many things that she is nearly impossible to define.”
“Listening to Hébert’s delicate reading of the decades-old reminiscences…is like sharing an evening with a gracious gourmet.”
" A beautiful book and writer. "
" As a vegetarian, I was a little hesitant to read a book by the author of "How to Cook a Wolf," but no worries--this book was mostly essays about place with some table thrown in. Excellent. "
" Some beautiful writing, I especially loved the pieces "I was really very hungry" and the ones on her personal kitchens in France. There were a few though that were kind of strange and hard to follow. "
" If you like food writing, read this. "
" I always find time with M.F.K Fisher's books and stories relaxing and comforting....her books are classics for lovers of food. There are many good reasons she's still widely read. Highly recommend any and all of her books. "
" This book is making me hungry, for fish specifically. I shall return to this book when I'm more likely to be able to satiate the appetite for the fresh fresh fish described by Ms. Fisher! "
" This was the first I'd ever read of M.F.K. Fisher. A friend gave me this book to read while I was in the hospital with food poisoning. "
" Always reliable MFK Fisher goodness, but not as sparkling as other pieces...more food would have helped. "
" I really wanted to like this book but I found her writing to be a little too whimsical and random. I did find it interesting reading about her life experiences in the early 20th century - life was just so different back then. "
" Took me a while to get through this -- it was rather lovely, but definitely leisurely. Fisher's writing is clean and evocative. "
" Reading the shipboard chapter side by side with Ship of Fools could be interesting. "
M. F. K. Fisher (1908–1992) was a preeminent American food writer. She was also a founder of the Napa Valley Wine Library. She wrote some twenty-seven books, including a translation of The Physiology of Taste by Brillat-Savarin. Her books are an amalgam of food literature, travel, and memoir. Fisher believed that eating well was just one of the “arts of life” and explored this in her writing.
C. M. Hébert is an Earphones Award winner and Audie Award nominee. She is the recording studio director for the Talking Books Program at the Library of Congress’ National Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped. She lives in Silver Spring, Maryland, with her husband, daughter, cat, and assorted fish.
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