Publisher's Weekly Review
Zimmerman, a contributor to Culinate.com, explores the privileged yet emotionally turbulent world of the pioneering American food writer Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher. In her sympathetic yet critical biography of the life behind Fisher's celebrated writings, Zimmerman finds a passionate woman defined by "lifelong hungers." Using access to Fisher's private letters and with help from the family, Zimmerman paints Fisher's emotions and discoveries that she realized in those moments where her personality and adventurous palette intersect. "Her desire for food, for love and for attention of any kind, was relentless," writes Zimmerman. "Food helped her understand the world." In turn, Zimmerman's carefully crafted narrative urges readers to connect Fisher's expanding self-awareness to the literary career she built. It also maps the unique tastes Fisher found, then sensuously described along her way from a California childhood to her European (mostly French) and Mexican odysseys; three marriages; and the suicides of her second husband, Tim Parrish, in 1941 followed by that of her brother David a year later. This focused, smart, and engaging view serves MFK Fisher as both culinary writer and cultural icon. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
The hunger for more and more insight into the life of M. F. K. Fisher continues unabated. Zimmerman draws on the archives of Fisher's papers for this detailed account of the early years of the great gastronome and food writer. Although information on Fisher's youth in Whittier, California, is sketchy and incomplete, the aesthetic pleasures of good eating attracted her early on, and she was able to focus herself on the details of tastes, smells, and colors of just about everything she put in her mouth. College, first in Illinois, then back in California, introduced her to a host of new friends and to her first husband, Al Fisher. Embarking on a honeymoon abroad, they eventually ended up in Dijon, France, which proved to be her spiritual home. Zimmerman details the marriage's breakup, Fisher's remarriage, her second husband's suicide, and her contrarian attitudes about life and love.--Knoblauch, Mark Copyright 2010 Booklist
Library Journal Review
Zimmerman, a San Francisco-based food and wine writer, reveals the personal life of American food writer M.F.K. Fisher (1908-92) in this well-researched and absorbing biography. Nearly half of Zimmerman's investigation covers Fisher's eight-year marriage to her first husband, Albert Fisher. Although this marriage brought M.F.K. Fisher to France from 1929 to 1932 and introduced her to culinary delights unheard of in her family's Whittier, CA, home, the relationship severely lacked intimacy and zeal. It was during her adulterous affair with Dillwyn Parrish, and their tragically short-lived marriage, that Fisher's passion bloomed. Indeed, Zimmerman's telling of Fisher's story moves from entertaining to exhilarating with the appearance of Parrish near the midway mark. While weaving the influence of food throughout the entire narrative, Zimmerman discusses Fisher's publishing career, her immediate family, and the birth of her first daughter to an unnamed man. She rightfully presents Fisher as an independent spirit who did not acquiesce to the domestic duties she despised but found the strength to follow an inner voice that desired more. Verdict Fans of Fisher and readers in women's studies will want to pick up this compelling biography.-Stacy Russo, Chapman Univ. Libs., Orange, CA (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.