PROVENCE, 1970

Some thoughts:

- Journalistic, by which I mean a lack of emotional heft. A pretty funny juxtaposition with its main subject, M.F.K. Fisher, whose writing sparkles even on a bad day.

- I can feel the author's affection for both his grandmother and M.F.-these were the strongest parts of the book. However, I think a long article focused just on M.F. would have been stronger that this bloated thing.

- This reads like the author smashed a bunch of journals and letters together, with only the barest original adhesive. It left me wanting to read M.F.'s journals directly and dispense with the sophomoric attempts to pull some grand narrative out of a quiet story about introspection and the passage of time.

- I can feel the author trying for this grand thesis of “big names in food meet, decide 1970 is the time for change” but it just doesn't work (or rather, he doesn't do the work). The quotations Barr has selected do support a change of mind among his subjects, but the gesture towards a defining moment of change isn't successful.

- The afterword is ham-fisted. The author goes to the Childs' home in Provence. Since all he's done thus far is say that he's M.F.'s grandnephew and thrown an anecdote or two to establish his authority, I can't be bothered to care about his family visiting France. It was out of step with the reportage vibes of the rest of the book.

- The back 20% is unbearable and unnecessary. Again, M.F. is the highlight of this book (likely because of Barr's access to her unpublished journals) and I'd have preferred to stop reading just after she's settled in ‘Last House' and has the Childs' over to visit. The rest was a flaccid tacked-on denouement.

- Still! I was interested in Barr's subject, and though this sometimes felt like five auto/biographies in a blender taped together with weak transition sentences, I stuck with it because I am always hungry for food writing and writing about behemoths of the field.

I suppose I cautiously recommend this, for the M.F. diary quotations, if nothing else. Don't hesitate to skim.