M.F.K. Fisher

Imagine yourself hiking through the hills of central France, a woman on her own in the 1930s.  A common enough thing to be doing at that time, in that place.  Midday and time for a break.  You come upon an unlikely restaurant in a renovated old mill next to a stream.  This is the setting for the first Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher (MFK) story I ever read, "I Was Really Very Hungry".  I have no idea when or where I read it but it made an impression.

Before embarking on the My Reading Road Map journey, I was reading MFK's "Sister Age", a small volume of essays and short stories around the theme of aging.  I did some digging around on the internet and learned about her life and her "Last House" in Glen Ellen, California, the home she designed and had built on land given to her by a friend for her lifetime use.  This is where she lived and wrote for the last two decades of her life.  She died in 1992.  As usual for me, I had to know more so I ordered this book from you-know-who.

 And, I remembered that many years ago I had acquired two other books by MFK.  A second edition hardback "Serve it Forth" published in 1937, and  "Two Towns in Provence", "a celebration of Aix-En-Provence & Marseille" according to the cover blurb. I still have not read either of these.

So now I owned four MFK books and she was on my mind front and center.  I had ordered a fifth book, again from you-know-who (a habit I am giving up, I promise!), "As They Were", and a book written by MFK's great-nephew Luke Barr, "Provence, 1970".  So now I have five of her books and one by her great-nephew about MFK's collaboration with other celebrated food writers one winter in Provence.

This is pretty normal for me.  I get obsessed with an author or subject and want to know everything there is to know.  All of this is going on while I am "supposed" to be entering my books online into the LibraryThing database.  So, I got cracking.  Here is where the Legacy Library idea was born.  I discovered that I share two books in common with MFK's Legacy Library.  Hers is "in-progress" as is mine, so there is hope for more.

These are the two books:

I am reading "As They Were" now.  It is a book of essays, part memoir, part voluptuous food writing.  "The Collected Stories of Colette" has been on my bookshelf for years.  I have dipped into it, but have not read all one hundred short stories.  So, for the next few weeks on Monday, I will check in here with progress reports on both books.

To whet your "appetite" for MFK Fisher, here is a recording, and according to Julia Child in her introduction, the only known recording, of MFK Fisher reading one of her stories.  It is "I Was Really Very Hungry".  Now, prepare to get off the dusty trail and sit down to a meal you will never forget.

I Was Really Very Hungry