Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant?

Description:

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.

subjects: Adult children of aging parents,  Aging,  Adult Children,  Psychology,  Graphic novels,  American Authors,  Comic books, strips,  Patients,  Dementia,  Parent-Child Relations,  Family,  Cartoonists,  Personal Memoirs,  Terminal Care,  Caregivers,  Aging parents,  Nonfiction,  Artists,  Family relationships,  Aged,  Cloth or Hardcover,  Biography,  Care,  Comics & graphic novels, nonfiction, biography & memoir,  Dementia, popular works,  Parent and adult child,  nyt:hardcover-graphic-books=2014-05-25,  New York Times bestseller,  Medicine,  Elderly,  Families,  Jewish families,  Roz Chast,  Pictorial Wit and humor,  Humor,  Family Relations