The author of Provence, 1970 (Luke Barr) is the great-nephew of MFK Fisher, a writer well known in the mid-20th century for her books on food, cooking, and their influence on culture. Fisher's first book was in published in 1937 (Serve it Forth, an unusual, sophisticated, and fearless culinary history). She had a long and distinguished career, but Barr's book focuses on just a few weeks, in France, in 1970, as Fisher participated in an incipient revolution in how Americans viewed cooking and eating. Her companions in these lively conversations were giants of the food world: James Beard, Julia Child, and others.
Working from a variety of family papers, including Fisher's diary and the original notebook she kept from the 1970 visit to Provence, Barr (who has inherited his great-aunt's gift for beautiful prose) has crafted a leisurely, intimate, fascinating book on French and American culture and the changes at work in the world of cooking at a single point in time. Don't try to read this in a hurry. Savor it.
Highly recommended.
I received a copy of this book in exchange for a review from Blogging for Books. The image above links to the book's Amazon page.
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