Book summary

M. F. K. Fisher writes about her childhood and early years in this compendium drawn from her diaries and short stories.

Media reviews

"...[A] collection of essays, written at different times throughout Fisher's life, which tell the now familiar tale of her growing up as part of an idiosyncratic family--a domineering grandmother, a freethinking newspaper editor father, a neurasthenic mother, siblings, and servants in staid, Quaker Whittier, California. It is all worth reading again. The early journal entries confirm what we already knew: just as her style was there at the end, worn to tatters by a lifetime's use, it was there at the beginning, before she had anything to say--a perfect tool as yet inexpertly used. We watch as she learns how to capture her responses to things--the taste of a fruit, a personal slight, a sudden squall of self-doubt--and so becomes progressively more interesting."