Long Ago in France: The Years in Dijon

1929 Living in Dijon France
"assez bien" - good enough in exams not "tres bien" - pg 71 - really shock - my comeuppance - hadn't studied never would again had the chance. Bothered me much more later than it did then. (Pg 79)

"Long Ago in France" is Fisher's exquisitely evocative, deliciously candid memoir of her three-year stay in Dijon. It is a delightful journey backward - in the grandest of company - into the voluptuous, genteel world that has vanished forever.

Clear-eyed evocation of a long-gone France. Read in Dijon, walked down her street, saw the same buildings, some 80 years on.

Three stars seems like too few to give this book, but the fact is that I liked it. I don't know if I would say that "I really liked it".

This book was very description-heavy, which seems appropriate because the foods she described were also very heavy! But it made it hard to get into. I think this book should be read slowly and carefully. You need to give it a lot of attention.

Anyway, it was good, and it her descriptions of toilet facilities certainly made me appreciate my own living situation!

In one of M.F.K. Fisher's many memoirs, she recounts the three years she spent living as a student with her husband in Dijon. In a dozen short chapters, the reader will meet countless interesting characters, from the uber-thrifty Ollagniers to the profligate Rigoulets. You will also get a very good sense of Dijon as a place, at least as it was in the 1920s.

While this book was quite pleasant, for some reason it didn't capture me.

A particularly engaging MFK Fisher compilation

M.F.K. Fisher and France. Always a good combination.

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