The Theoretical Foot

Description

An undiscovered novel by an iconic American food writer - the publication of this enchanting portrait of 1930s bohemian life will be a major literary event 'I sank into The Theoretical Foot like a fat strawberry into whipped cream ... Intimate and moral, funny and wise, there is something incantatory about her style ... She is not just a great food writer. She is a great writer, full stop' Rachel Cooke, Observer Susan and Joe never want this perfect summer to end. It is the 1930s, and society frowns on the slack morals of couples living in sin - but judgement is suspended at the haven on Lake Geneva where Joe's friend Sara and her lover Tim preside. Here, surrounded by orchards heavy with plums, they are thrust into an exotic milieu of artistic Americans. As morning gives way to afternoon and sunset brings the evening's festivities, the unseen tensions and desires of the group are revealed.

M.F.K. Fisher is credited with inventing American food writing and was one of its preeminent figures of the twentieth century. Following her acclaimed debut, Serve It Forth, her classic, Consider the Oyster, was published in 1941. She went on to publish over twenty-five books celebrating and interrogating food, love, and the sensuous life. M.F.K. Fisher's body of work encompasses essay collections, short stories, memoirs, journals and one other novel, Not Now But Now. Born in Michigan in 1908, she spent three formative years in France before settling in California. She died in 1992. mfkfisher.com/

I sank into The Theoretical Foot like a fat strawberry into whipped cream ... Intimate and moral, funny and wise, there is something incantatory about her style, though no sooner has she hypnotised you than she'll bring you sharply back to your senses ... She is not, you see, just a great food writer. She is a great writer, full stop -- Rachel Cooke * Observer * A nuanced story ... in which a celebrated non-fiction writer finds her stride as a novelist ... A lyrical and witty examination of tensions arising within a bohemian group * Big Issue * Admirably, The Theoretical Foot deals with both poles - the perfect nothingness, lightness and frivolity of the days before tragedy, and the squirming aftermath ... But because this is M.F.K. Fisher (even young M.F.K. Fisher, still coming into her remarkable voice), the frivolity has its own value. It is beautiful. It is youth and second-youth, the joy of living in a time before sadness * NPR * Beautiful ... Dream-like * Emerald Street * I do not know of anyone in the United States . . . who writes better prose -- W. H. Auden Poet of the appetites -- John Updike If I were still teaching high-school English, I'd use [Fisher's] books to show how to write simply, how to enjoy food and drink but, most of all, how to enjoy life. Her books and letters are one feast after another -- Frank McCourt 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 *