Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant? - The Library of the Uncommons

Hardcover

English language

Published Nov. 15, 2014 by Bloomsbury.

ISBN:: 978-1-60819-806-1
OCLC Number:: 860395376

(3 reviews)

In her first memoir, Roz Chast brings her signature wit to the topic of aging parents. Spanning the last several years of their lives and told through four-color cartoons, family photos, and documents, and a narrative as rife with laughs as it is with tears, Chast's memoir is both comfort and comic relief for anyone experiencing the life-altering loss of elderly parents. When it came to her elderly mother and father, Roz held to the practices of denial, avoidance, and distraction. But when Elizabeth Chast climbed a ladder to locate an old souvenir from the 'crazy closet' -- with predictable results -- the tools that had served Roz well through her parents' seventies, eighties, and into their early nineties could no longer be deployed. While the particulars are Chastian in their idiosyncrasies -- an anxious father who had relied heavily on his wife for stability as he slipped into dementia …

In her first memoir, Roz Chast brings her signature wit to the topic of aging parents. Spanning the last several years of their lives and told through four-color cartoons, family photos, and documents, and a narrative as rife with laughs as it is with tears, Chast's memoir is both comfort and comic relief for anyone experiencing the life-altering loss of elderly parents. When it came to her elderly mother and father, Roz held to the practices of denial, avoidance, and distraction. But when Elizabeth Chast climbed a ladder to locate an old souvenir from the 'crazy closet' -- with predictable results -- the tools that had served Roz well through her parents' seventies, eighties, and into their early nineties could no longer be deployed. While the particulars are Chastian in their idiosyncrasies -- an anxious father who had relied heavily on his wife for stability as he slipped into dementia and a former assistant principal mother whose overbearing personality had sidelined Roz for decades -- the themes are universal: adult children accepting a parental role; aging and unstable parents leaving a family home for an institution; dealing with uncomfortable physical intimacies; managing logistics; and hiring strangers to provide the most personal care. A portrait of two lives at their end and an only child coping as best she can, this book shows the full range of Roz Chast's talent as cartoonist and storyteller. - Publisher.

2 editions

4thace reviewed Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant? by Roz Chast

Review of "Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant?" on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

An amazingly honest work, where the embellishments more clearly visible being depicted through the author's drawing style than many other memoirs which have only words to work with. You know from the first few pages that it's going to be a difficult ride what with the physical decline and the dying, but the genius of the storytelling is that the things that turn out to be the most difficult are probably not the ones you expected. I found it to be a compelling read told by one of the keenest observers of the human condition. I think it some ways the particular situation the author found herself in was more difficult than many, in other ways maybe a little better than it might have been, but it is clear that when you are going through it what you find is something that will manage to test your limits as a …

An amazingly honest work, where the embellishments more clearly visible being depicted through the author's drawing style than many other memoirs which have only words to work with. You know from the first few pages that it's going to be a difficult ride what with the physical decline and the dying, but the genius of the storytelling is that the things that turn out to be the most difficult are probably not the ones you expected. I found it to be a compelling read told by one of the keenest observers of the human condition. I think it some ways the particular situation the author found herself in was more difficult than many, in other ways maybe a little better than it might have been, but it is clear that when you are going through it what you find is something that will manage to test your limits as a human being in any case. It's easy to see how this had been nominated for the National Book Award the year it came out. It feels destined to be regarded as a future classic.

brettsovereign

rated it

Feb. 6, 2015

anaulin@bookwyrm.social

rated it

July 3, 2023