Customer Reviews

Among Friends

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
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Some people think of MFK Fisher as simply a food writer. This book reveals the flaw in that way of thinking, because Fisher was truly one of the great writers of the last century. "Among Friends" tells the story of her growing up in the 1910s in Whittier, California -- a Quaker community. A non-Quaker, she tells of the gentle, exclusive bigotry of the Friends. She also describes a California which has all but vanished -- the drive from Whitter to Ventura was an overland trek! And, her culinary memory is astonishing. She describes in glorious detail what her family ate and how she came to her love of good food, well prepared. This book works on so many levels, and I cannot recommend it highly enough.

Not only does MFK fisher appreciate good food, but this book is one everybody can relate to. Its a FUN read with language reserved mostly for poetry. An absolute MUST.

I received this book as a gift to read while recovering from surgery. I plodded through the preface and first few chapters, then had to resort to skimming the rest. I found it cumbersome and verbose -- filled with long-winded sentences, lofty and uncommon language (had to keep my dictionary at hand), and references that were entirely unknown to me. One might say it was over my head I suppose. The best parts were her descriptions of the simple but heavenly foods she recalled from her childhood. Other than that, and her account of life in Quaker Whittier CA, I didn't find much in this memoir that I cared about. I know that her prose is highly regarded, but it was lost on me. I have not read any of her other books.

I must agree with the review that finds this book clumsy, wordy, and difficult to read. Ultimately it's just boring. While I have no trouble understanding her vocabulary, and usually prefer writers who use involved sentences, Fisher rambles and doesn't use her vocabulary or sentence structure to good effect. I'm not sure she has a clear idea of what she wants to say, and her observations on other people in her life seem mean-spirited and cynical. She pretends to have enjoyed the Quakers, yet portrays them in an extremely negative and biased manner, basing many of her conceptions on what she presumes they must have thought and felt. She doesn't recognize that she may have misinterpreted their actions through the filter of her own childhood ideas. I read it for a Book Club, but what a chore to get through it.