"If I were still teaching high-school English, I'd use [M.F.K. Fisher's] books to show how to write simply, how to enjoy food and drink but, most of all, how to enjoy life."---Frank McCourt"[Fisher's] sensuous, evocative prose redefined food writing."---Gourmet magazine"Poet of the appetites."---John Updike"There is almost a wicked thrill in following [Fisher's] uninhibited track through the glories of the good life."---James Beard"How wonderful to have here in my hands the essence of M.F.K. Fisher, whose wit and fulsome opinions on food and those who produce it, comment upon it, and consume it are as apt today as they were several decades ago, when she composed them. Why did she choose food and hunger she was asked, and she replied, `When I write about hunger, I am really writing about love andthe hunger for it, and warmth, and the love of it ... and then the warmth and richness and fine reality of hunger satisfied.' This is the stuff we need to hear, and to hear again and again."---Julia Child"[The Art of Eating] should be required reading for every cook. It defin in a sensual and beautiful way the vital relationship between food and culture."---Alice Waters"M.F.K. Fisher ... brings onstage a peach or a brace of quail and shows us history, cities, fantasies, memories, emotions."---The New York Review of Books"Beyond the gastronomical bravura, she is a passionate woman; food is her metaphor."---Shana Alexander"[Fisher] writes as one intelligent adult to another---practically, often profoundly, and always beautifully."---The San Francisco ExaminerIn An Extravagant Hunger, time slows and is relished, and the turning points and casual strolls of M.F.K. Fisher's life are unwrapped and savored. From the Berengaria that washed her across the sea to France in 1929, to Le Paquis, the Swiss estate that later provided a backdrop for some of the most idyllic and fleeting moments of her life, the stories of Fisher's love for food and her love for family and men are meticulously researched and exquisitely captured in this book. Exploring Fishet's lonely and formative time in Europe with her first husband and her subsequent divorce and re-marriage to her creative sparkplug, Dillwyn Parrish, and his tragic suicide, the story of M.F.K. Fisher's life becomes as vibrant and passionate as her prolific words on wine and cuisine.Letters and journal entries piece together a dramatic life, but An Extravagant Hunger steps further, bridging the gaps between personal notes and her public persona, filling in the silences by offering an engaging and unprecedented depth of intuitive commentary. With a passion of her own, Anne Zimmerman is the careful witness, lingering beside M.F.K. Fisher through her most dramatic and productive years. Read Less