An Extravagant Hunger: The Passionate Years of M.F.K. Fisher

Still, Mary Frances wrote her mother that they were “bounding with vim and vigor” and that she “loved Al more every minute.” It was the first of many sweeping statements Mary Frances would pen to mask the hurts Al would heap on her over the coming years. Her optimism was a healing tactic, and she hoped it would convince her family (and herself) tha

“It doesn’t seem that two people are any happier than we are,” he wrote, tempering his enthusiasm by adding, “but I guess this has happened to many people in the world over a period of years, and that they have always felt just the same.”

MARY FRANCES COULD have become a picky eater under her grandmother’s influence. Instead, in rebellion, she began to value pleasure over repression; she would seek out abundance in food, and in life, again and again.

“We write to taste life twice, in the moment, and in retrospection.” —ANAÏS NIN