Can't we talk about something more pleasant? :
by Chast, Roz, frey50
Edition statement:First U.S. edition. Physical details: 228 pages : illustrations (some color), portraits ; 25 cm ISBN:9781608198061; 1608198065. ISSN:978160819| Item type | Current location | Call number | Status | Date due | Barcode |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 300 - 399 | Book Cart | 306.8740846 Cha (Browse shelf) | Available | 101489 |
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| 306.856 Sem The Visitation Handbook | 306.874 Lau How to build a stepfamily that really works | 306.8740207 Har 13 is the new 18-- and other things my children taught me (while I was having a nervous breakdown being their mother) / | 306.8740846 Cha Can't we talk about something more pleasant? : | 306.8743 Bel Cat & Nat's mom truths : | 306.8743 Row About my mother : | 306.8743 Sal Mothers & daughters / |
Subtitle from cover.
The beginning of the end -- Return to the fold -- The elder lawyer -- Galapagos -- The fall -- Maimonides -- Sundowning -- The end of an era -- The move -- The old apartment -- The place -- The next step -- Kleenex abounding -- Postmortem -- Elizabeth, alone -- Bedtime stories -- Chrysalis -- The end.
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 a mixture of cartoons, family photos, 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 Chast-ian 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.