M.F.K. Fisher, whom John Updike has called our poet of the appetites,
here pays tribute to that most delicate and enigmatic of foods---the
oyster. As she tells of oysters found in stews, in soups, roasted,
baked, fried, prepared à la Rockefeller or au naturel--and of the pearls
sometimes found therein--Fisher describes her mother's joy at
encountering oyster loaf in a girls' dorm in he 1890's, recalls her own
initiation into the strange cold succulence of raw oysters as a young
woman in Marseille and Dijon, and explores both the bivalve's famed
aphrodisiac properties and its equally notorious gut-wrenching powers.
Plumbing the dreadful but exciting life of the oyster, Fisher invites
readers to share in the comforts and delights that this delicate edible
evokes, and enchants us along the way with her characteristically wise
and witty prose.