M.F.K. Fisher, whom John Updike has called our and "poet of the appetites, and " 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 a 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 the 1890's, recalls her own initiation into the and "strange cold succulence and " 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 and "dreadful but exciting and " 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.