The Theoretical Foot

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 *