Newbury Town Library

Can't we talk about something more pleasant?, Roz Chast

eng

contains biographical information

illustrationsportraits

no index present

non fiction

Can't we talk about something more pleasant?

comics graphic novels

860395376

Roz Chast

" In her first memoir, Roz Chast brings her 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, 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" 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"--, Product description

Introduction -- Beginning of the end -- Return to the fold -- Elder lawyer -- Galapagos -- Fall -- Maimonides -- Sundowning -- End of an era -- Move -- Old apartment -- Place -- Next step -- Kleenex abounding -- Postmortem -- Elizabeth, alone -- Bedtime stories -- Chrysalis -- End -- Epilogue

Roz Chast, a memoir