The Arrangement

Starred review from December 21, 2015
This stellar novel from Warlick (Seek the Living) fictionalizes the beginnings of the seminal food writer M.F.K. Fisher—known to her friends as Mary Frances—amid the triangle of her professor husband, Al, and their friend Tim Parrish in 1930s Los Angeles. Though Al is a writer, or perhaps because he is one, he proves to be a poor source of creative support for Mary Frances. He dismisses her essays as a hobby. Both find a connection with their published neighbor Tim, who is married to a much younger aspiring actress named Gigi. Tim nurtures Mary Frances’s talents, and their affection soon turns physical. Shortly afterward, Gigi suddenly leaves Tim for another man, sending Tim reeling. He flees back east to recover, but later reconnects with Mary Frances. They become lovers again, though Mary Frances states that she can’t leave Al, who is at his lowest after the death of his father, unable to write or find work that he likes. The trio then find themselves living together at Tim’s behest in Switzerland, shortly after Mary Frances scores a book deal. Warlick handles her protagonists’ affair with complexity: it’s clear that Mary Frances and Tim both love Al and don’t want to hurt him. It’s a treat to find such a beautifully written treatment of love in its different forms amid M.F.K. Fisher’s tale of unlikely success. Agent: Marly Rusoff, Marly Rusoff & Associates.

December 1, 2015
Blending fact and fiction, this historical novel covers nine eventful years in the life of legendary food writer M.F.K. Fisher. All the ingredients for a lively, literate page-turner are here: a beautiful, talented protagonist; lush settings; illicit sex; mouthwatering food. But the novel falls flat--ironic considering how buoyant and lyrical Fisher's own writing is. Beginning in 1934, the book is mostly about the unraveling of Mary Frances Kennedy's marriage to Al Fisher, a college professor, and her affair with--and eventual marriage to--Dillwyn "Tim" Parrish, a painter and sometime writer who edited and encouraged her early work. The narrative, which faithfully follows the outlines of Fisher's life, moves between California, France, and Switzerland, where the Fishers briefly lived with Parrish. The two men were close friends, and there is plenty of agonizing on the part of the adulterous lovers on the right course of action to take with regard to Al, who has problems with sexual and professional performance. Perhaps as a result, the novel often feels gray and despairing. Another problem: Fisher's life is not exactly unexamined. In addition to a gastronomic memoir, she published many books--in which she figured prominently--as well as journals and correspondence. Since her death in 1992, two biographies have appeared. That doesn't leave so much for a novelist to imagine. Warlick, author of three previous works of fiction, contributes invented dialogue--some of it stilted--and fairly graphic sex scenes, which don't really deepen our understanding of the characters. She also tells the story from multiple perspectives, which proves distracting--better to have homed in on Fisher's point of view. Warlick is not a bad writer, and this novel is an ambitious effort. In the end, though, it never makes us care about its star-crossed trio.

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December 1, 2015
Warlick (Seek the Living, 2005) fictionalizes one aspect of the life of M. F. K. Fisher, the celebrated food writer, in this novel of daring romance. Torn between two lovers may be the stuff of torch songs, but in reality, the emotional turmoil that came from loving both her husband and her husband's best friend was the fire that fueled Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher's passion. Daring, insatiable, luscious Mary Frances finds a simmering comfort in her undemonstrative marriage to impoverished professor and frustrated poet Al Fisher. It is her wanton, one-night stand with the wealthy and debonair Tim Parrish that reinvigorates her life. When Tim's marriage to the glittery starlet Gigi ends, he decamps for Europe, only to discover he can't live without Mary Frances' ardor or Al's camaraderie. The solution, he thinks, is to invite the couple to live with him at his estate in the Swiss Alps. In Warlick's tantalizing and delectable portrayal of the epic, actual love affair between Fisher and Parrish, adultery and marital dissolution, loyalty and friendship, ambition and defeat are as zestfully layered as the most succulent torte.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)

March 1, 2016

Reimagining Mary Frances Kennedy (M.F.K.) Fisher's relationship with Tim Parrish, whom Fisher eventually married, Warlick (Seek the Living) chronicles the full arc of their romance, beginning with what happened before the marriage: the arrangements. The first takes place in Los Angeles and involves a Hollywood starlet and a potential studio scandal, because in the late 1930s actresses did not get divorced. Mary Frances and her husband, Al Fisher, move in with Tim's wife, Gigi, while Tim secretly files for divorce back east. The second arrangement takes place in Switzerland, where Tim, Mary Frances, and Al make an awkward threesome. Strangely, for a story of passion, much of the writing is terse and dispassionate except when the subject is food; Warlick is better at showing us Fisher as food writer than as lover. There are choppy shifts in perspective among the three main characters, and the narrative is not improved by the random flash-forwards to the present.

In her novel The Theoretical Foot, Fisher writes what she knows. A scene in Warlick's work depicts an elderly Fisher reflecting, while sorting through her notebooks, that ."..she has written about Tim for years now. Hasn't she always written about Tim?" Well, she certainly does here. The story is autobiographical; while the events that occur may be fictional, they draw heavily from Fisher's own life. Tim is still Tim, but everyone else gets a pseudonym, including the barely disguised members of both of their families. The two have not yet married and are living in sin in 1930s Switzerland. The Nazis are expanding throughout Europe but are mostly background noise for the fashionable set staying at La Prairie house. The work reads as a series of interrelated character studies. Sara, Fisher's stand-in, spends most of her time in the kitchen, and Tim in the wine cellar, but the two serve as the nexus for their houseguests. In a highly compressed period of time, Tim and Sara's friends meet, greet, fall in love, fall out of love, grow up, and make life-changing decisions. And they do it with energy, passion, and misguided desire. As with Warlick's novel, this title includes awkward interjections from the future; a patient (Tim) is recovering from an amputation and plagued by a phantom limb, the eponymous theoretical foot. Fortunately, it doesn't distract from the larger story. VERDICT The Arrangement is more successful with the history of Fisher and Parrish's relationship than with capturing emotion, while The Theoretical Foot overall presents an engaging read, recommended for fans of Fisher, literary fiction, and historical travel fiction. [See Prepub Alert 8/31/15 for Warlick's The Arrangement.]--Pamela Mann, St. Mary's Coll. Lib., MD

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 1, 2015

This reimagining of the life of legendary food writer M.F.K. Fisher deals with appetites of all kinds. Mary Frances, as she is called as the novel opens, is married to uncommunicative Al and eager for a passionate interlude with Al's friend Tim. You can imagine what happens when she acts on her desires. This book is appearing ten years after Seek the Living, the last novel from Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship winner Warlick; the publisher is betting on this one.

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.