cover image A Welcoming Life: An MFK Fisher Scrapbook

A Welcoming Life: An MFK Fisher Scrapbook

M. F. K. Fisher, Dominique Gioia. Counterpoint LLC, $35 (128pp) ISBN 978-1-887178-32-7

This photo keepsake will delight admirers of the late Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher (1908-1992), whose books (How to Cook a Wolf and 25 others) combined her pleasure in good food with her pleasures (and sorrows) in life. In their time, these books were exceptional, and their popularity blazed a trail to what has since become a distinct genre, though few of its number have matched her supple prose and embracing warmth. In this collection of 242 photographs of Fisher from infancy to old age, we see her with her parents and siblings in Southern California, with her two daughters and grandchildren, husbands and friends in her various homes in the U.S. and abroad. A great beauty, she sat for photographic artists Man Ray and George Hurrell, among others, and some of the pictures here might have been taken from a fashion model's portfolio. They are accompanied by pertinent excerpts from Fisher's own texts, as well as by captions by Gioia, who worked editorially with Fisher on several of her books. Although Fisher herself wrote extensively about her life, love affairs, marriages and sensuous delight in the world, this collection offers a worthy condensed and visual complement to that. (May)