The Theoretical Foot, by MFK Fisher

Renowned as a food writer, who also wrote autobiographically, MFK Fisher’s only novel was published long after her death, which begs the question did she want it published at all? It’s an odd book, allegedly drawn from her own life, containing a story within a story. Set in Switzerland just prior to WWII it depicts an interesting slice of a very particular life of American ex-pats. Sarah and Tim are madly in love and living in sin outside Geneva. They would marry if they could and are presumably awaiting a divorce to be able to – it is never made entirely clear. Their idyll is beset by visiting family and friends, some welcome some not, all difficult to deal with in their own way. All the visitors are in love with the wrong people and torture themselves and/or each other because of it. Some of the characters are supremely slappable, some are overly complicated, others impenetrably enigmatic. The writing teeters between lyrical and tedious, with some mesmerising descriptions of landscape, food and clothes and some excruciating pseudo-psychological analysis of feelings and motivations. If it is true that the enveloping story of illness, pain and death is taken from life then it must have been extraordinarily difficult to write and it is no wonder the novel was not published in Fisher’s lifetime. The setting is beautiful, the situation and timing interesting and the characters have promise. It probably needed a fair bit more work, particularly from an independent editor, to make it worth publishing.