Syncopation on the theme of food, Comfort Me With Apples earned Joe Fiorito rave reviews and enthusiastic fans when it was first published in 1994. One writer declared it was a small miracle of prose. A rich buffet of diverse short essays, Comfort Me With Apples is about the appetites of the soul as well as the body.
Fioritos range is wide: from the ingredients for the best chili dog in the world to the recipe for chicken soup for the courting soul; from the sharp portrait of a young boys real hunger to the olfactory pleasures of a proper barbecue. His guests include an Inuk whom he takes to a sushi bar, an old man in pajamas, Julia Child, several daddies, a woman with a seductive appetite, and Hercules. You are invited to join them.
“How does Joe Fiorito do it? The mixture of toughness, elegance and lethal wit. The street-smart, bruising tenderness packed into language sharper than flint.”
–Mark Abley, author of The Ice Storm
“Fiorito is that wonder of wonders, a deeply curious and perceptive reporter who is also a fine and imaginative writer.”
–Montreal Gazette
“There’s a wise-cracking tenderness to his writing that makes him come across as a sort of Damon Runyon of the north.”
–Canadian Forum