Ebook: M.F.K. Fisher's Provence

The book highlights her strong sense of place - Fisher's Celtic eye for detail - with a comparison of Aix-en-Provence, a university town, the site of an international music festival and the former capital of Provence, and Marseille, the port town.
Fisher's description of the sights and smells belonging to an Aix bakery shop window is her Platonic ideal of a bakery shop to be found anywhere in France, for example, with its “delicately layered" scents of “fresh eggs, fresh sweet butter, grated butter, vanilla beans, old kirsch and newly ground almonds."
Then, there is her portrayal of the sounds of Aix's fountains mixed with the music of Mozart during the town's festival, leaving her bedazzled. She would return again and again to stroll the narrow streets of Aix with two young daughters who “seemed to grow like water-flowers under the greening buds of the plane trees."
It is the quality of Fisher's writing that inspired photographer Aileen Ah-Tye to...