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.
About the Author :
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.
Review :
"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."
-- "Philadelphia Inquirer"
"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."
-- "San Francisco Chronicle"
"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."
-- "New York Times Book Review"
"Listening to Hébert's delicate reading of the decades-old reminiscences...is like sharing an evening with a gracious gourmet."
-- "Booklist"
"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."
-- "Newsweek"
"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."
-- "Chicago Sun Times"
"To my mind, As They Were contains some of the best writing M.F.K. Fisher has ever done."
-- "Boston Globe"
