Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant?

by Author Roz Chast

  • Publisher Bloomsbury
  • Year published 2014
  • ISBN: ISBN 978-1608198061
  • Number of pages 228 pages
  • WorldCat

Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant book cover
About the Book
Book description

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 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. ebook icon Audio book icon

Roz Chast photo
About the Author
Author description

Roz Chast was born in Brooklyn, New York. Her cartoons began appearing in the New Yorker in 1978. Since then she has published hundreds of cartoons and written or illustrated more than a dozen books. Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant? is her first memoir.

Official Website of Roz Chast

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