Sister Age

In these fifteen remarkable stories, M.F.K. Fisher, one of the most admired writers of our time, embraces age as St. Francis welcomed Brother Pain. With a saint to guide us, she writes in her Foreword, perhaps we can accept in a loving way "the inevitable visits of a possibly nagging harpy like Sister Age" But in the stories, it is the human strength in the unavoidable encounter with the end of life that Mrs. Fisher dramatizes so powerfully. Other themes -- the importance of witnessing death, the marvelous resilience of the old, the passing of vanity -- are all explored with insight, sympathy and, often, a sly wit.

Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher was one of the great food writers of the twentieth century. Born in 1908 in Albion, Michigan, Fisher grew up in Whittier, California, and was educated at Illinois College, Occidental College, UCLA, and at the University of Dijon in France. She travelled to, and lived in Europe throughout her adult life. The author of numerous books, magazine articles, novels, and a translation of Brillat-Savarin’s The Physiology of Taste, Fisher is best remembered for her gastronomical works and the autobiographical nature of her writings about people, places, and food. M F.K. Fisher died in 1992.