I am a frequent traveler to Provence and I love Aix, one of MFK's two towns. It just so happens, Deux Garcon, MFK's favorite restaurant in Aix is my favorite place to people watch too. The spreading trees protect you from the sun and a long lunch,the French way, lets you view students and locals coming and going on the wide beautiful avenue. While things have changed through the years her tales of both Aix and Marseille ring true today.
The book made my daydreams of France more vivid and I am ready for my next trip!

No, this book is not for someone who wants lively light entertainment, and it is not a 'travel' book. What it is is a lovely woven cloth of experience and observation. It's subtle and beautiful.

I have been greatly been disappointed in this book. I am a total Francophile and soak up just about any book on life in southern France, be it travelogue, novel, cultural study, etc. I have been reading Map of Another Town over the past few months and it's been a struggle. MFK Fisher goes into painfully boring and unnecessary detail on the most insignificant things, like having to go back and forth between offices and buildings while seeking the appropriate vaccinations for a trip to Africa, and what she thinks of every little thing related to the process. She'll devote pages and pages to experiences that have nothing to do with live in Aix-en-Provence and its environs -- it's a map of her own head, where she spends too much time. She finds herself rather fascinating, but I found her self-centered.

I thought it would be interesting to read about life there in the 1950s and 1960s, but again, the book is less a cultural study than autobiographical ramblings (if you can find it, Village in the Vaucluse, a Laurence Wylie cultural study first written in 1957 and updated in 1967 and 1974, is fascinating and was one of my college texts for a French culture course -- 5 stars plus.). I probably will not even bother with A Considerable Town and will finish Map of Another Town only because I feel like I should.

If you are considering this book because life in southern France fascinates you, I would instead recommend any of the Peter Mayle books (not jumping on the bandwagon here; I've read his books from the beginning and own all of them, and his writing style is absolutely delightful and endearing, even when he's being a snob), Yvone Lenard, etc. In fact, Peter Mayle's books so charmingly describe Provence that they serve as a guidebook to the best the region has to offer, so you can visualize and plan your own trip. With his writing style, it feels like you're along for the trip, whereas with MFK Fisher, you wonder when you're going to get there.

MFK Fisher holds a special place in the hearts of all `foodie' Americans. She was perhaps the 1st person to see the sense of writing food-based literary books and articles, and of course it's now a genre unto itself. But few have rivaled her beautiful prose, and I recall reading that she once said she considered it a day well-lived if she'd managed to compose one perfect sentence. To consider her just a food writer is to do her an injustice; she is a writer, first and foremost, who happens, sometimes, to write about food.
Two Towns in Provence is a memoir of the years she spent in France, after her divorce from her 3rd husband, with her two young daughters. The two towns in question are Aix-en-Provence and Marseille. Aix is full of artists, eccentrics, gardens, and wonderful food. Marseille is grittier, less beautiful, but still, oh, the food! Fisher's talent, besides the obvious ones of food appreciation, cooking, and writing spectacularly crystalline prose, is her ability to accept life at face value, adapt, and make the best of situations, managing to observe closely and have a wonderful time in the process.
Highest recommendation for all Francophiles, cooks, and lovers of memoirs and superior writing.

M.F.K. Fisher wrote a number of books covering various aspects of food, cooking, travel, and her own autobiography. She moved to France before WWII with her then husband Fisher. Her birth name was Mary Frances Kennedy and she was raised in Whittier California. She kept Fisher as a last name throughout her life although she divorced him for a man who became the love of her life and her second husband. He suffered from an ailment (result of a wound he sustained in WWI I believe)the pain of which eventually caused him to end his own life. She remarried a third time, had two little girls and divorced her third husband. Following the divorce, she took the two girls and went to live in southern France -- a place she knew and loved deeply. "Two Towns..." picks up her autobiography at this point.

The "two towns" were orginally published as "Map of Another Town" and "A Considerable Town". The first book is about Aix-en-Provence founded more than two thousand years ago by Roman invaders. Gaius Marius and Julius Caesar both spent time in Aix and Roman remains can be found everywhere. Many artists have found Aix irresistable.

Fisher lived in Aix for a time and her writing concerns everyday events -- the view from the apartment, the habits of the landlady, shopping, food preparation, eating meals cooked by others, school days for the girls. What makes the book extraordinary is Fisher's descriptive writing about the exotic setting composed of beautiful architecture, gardens, fountains, passageways and gates and excentric people. I prefer Fisher's writing to that of more recently relocated authors who have moved to Provence and record their struggles to overcome their surroundings. Fisher moved to Provence and accepted it.

"A Considerable Town" is about Marseille in the 1950's. Considered a dangerous place for centuries, Marseille has always a source of interest. MFK Fisher is not as fond of Marseille as she was of other places in France, but she went there anyway, and writes objectively. She says Marseille has a reputation of being a "world capital for dope, whores, and street violence." She considers this information a bit erroneous and goes on to write a more balanced account. She says others have used words such as "apart, unique, unusual" but these words are not enough. She says she keeps returning for "a week, ten days, many weeks or a month" and searches for the reasons why the city attacts her. She says the city is very old, has an infantile enjoyment of playing.

I found this book so enjoyable, I am ordering the hard cover. I recommend it to anyone who loves France.