"Intensely personal and beautifully written, Discomfort Food takes up the uncanny undertow of the apparently anodyne genre of still life in nineteenth-century France. Marni Reva Kessler brings to bear all the memories and associations attendant upon things like a fish stew in the making or an outsized mound of butter and eggs, weaving her readings of these works together with fascinating visual comparisons and a vast array of historical knowledge about the pressures informing the making, consumption, and representation of food."–Carol Armstrong, Yale Univesrity
"Marni Reva Kessler invites us on a compelling personal journey in food and art that begins with Manet's still life, Poisson, etc. Fishy dead bodies abound in this gruesome whodunit. The detective, a sinister wet eel, sniffs and snakes through the evidence: a wide-eyed gurnard, a gasping mullet, a lemon flashing a yellow warning, and oysters cowering in the background. All of this in exquisite prose, as sharp as a knife."–Thomas Parker, author of Tasting French Terroir: The History of an Idea
"Discomfort Food reads like a novel. I turned the pages with bated breath, waiting for 'what would happen' in the unfolding of a series of dazzling arguments. This is fine stuff, each word wrapped in a dappled tone and lush register conveying, like the glowing fruits in Caillebotte's painting or the nacred fish scales and oyster shells in Manet's fish painting, a gorgeousness of effect."–Janet Beizer, Harvard University
