Can't We Talk about Something More Pleasant?: A Memoir
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Can't We Talk about Something More Pleasant?: A Memoir Hardcover – May 6, 2014
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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
Roz Chast, photo by Bill Franzen
From Booklist
New Yorker cartoonist and prolific author Chast (What I Hate from A to Z, 2011) writes a bravely honest memoir of watching her parents decline, become too frail to stay in the Brooklyn apartment they called home for five decades, suffer dementia and physical depletion, and die in their nineties in a hospice-care facility. Unlike many recent parent-focused cartoon memoirs, such as Alison Bechdel’s Are You My Mother? (2012) and Nicole J. George’s Calling Dr. Laura (2012), in which the story is as much about the cartoonist’s current work and family life as it is about his or her parents, Chast keeps her narrative tightly focused on her mother and father and her own problematic—though not uncommon—guilt-provoking relationships with them. Chast’s hallmark quirky sketches are complemented by annotated photos from her own and her parents’ childhoods. Occasionally, her hand-printed text will take up more than a full page, but it’s neatly wound into accompanying panels or episodes. An unflinching look at the struggles facing adult children of aging parents. --Francisca Goldsmith
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52 of 54 people found the following review helpful
By
Jill Meyer
TOP 500 REVIEWERVINE VOICE on May 8, 2014
Format: Kindle Edition
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Cartoonist Roz Chast has written/drawn a book about her parents' final years, "Can't We Talk About Something Pleasant?". In it she describes both her own upbringing - only child, born late-in-life to older and neurotic parents - and how her feelings as a child hindered her dealing with the parents as they aged. She is certainly not alone in her mixed-up emotions towards her parents; most of us have the same feelings. Roz Chast can just express them better.
This is a difficult book to read. It must have been excruciating to live through and then put down on paper. But it is a book that all us "boomers" (hate the word but what else is there? "Lunch meat in the sandwich generation"?) should read. Because I'm not sure too much is going to change when we reach our 80's and 90's. We tend to have fewer children - Roz was an only child, as I noted above - and so fewer people to share the burdens of us as we age. Will we be put in Assisted Living "places" with the alacrity we seem to be putting our own parents into? For the record, both my parents died in nursing homes where they received excellent care.
Roz Chast's parents - George and Elizabeth - lived well into their 90's. And they aged "together". They tried to take care of themselves and each other in their dingy Brooklyn apartment, but it came the time to get them the extra care they could no longer give themselves. Roz describes how going through her parents' vacated apartment was like going through a junk store haven. And she shows photographs - as well as using her drawings - to show how crowded the apartment truly was.
The reader may come away thinking Roz had conflicted feelings about her parents. She sure did and she was certainly entitled to those feelings.Read more ›
This is a difficult book to read. It must have been excruciating to live through and then put down on paper. But it is a book that all us "boomers" (hate the word but what else is there? "Lunch meat in the sandwich generation"?) should read. Because I'm not sure too much is going to change when we reach our 80's and 90's. We tend to have fewer children - Roz was an only child, as I noted above - and so fewer people to share the burdens of us as we age. Will we be put in Assisted Living "places" with the alacrity we seem to be putting our own parents into? For the record, both my parents died in nursing homes where they received excellent care.
Roz Chast's parents - George and Elizabeth - lived well into their 90's. And they aged "together". They tried to take care of themselves and each other in their dingy Brooklyn apartment, but it came the time to get them the extra care they could no longer give themselves. Roz describes how going through her parents' vacated apartment was like going through a junk store haven. And she shows photographs - as well as using her drawings - to show how crowded the apartment truly was.
The reader may come away thinking Roz had conflicted feelings about her parents. She sure did and she was certainly entitled to those feelings.Read more ›
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74 of 79 people found the following review helpful
By
Amazon Customer
on May 7, 2014
Format: Hardcover
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I inhaled this last night. As if she had written about me and my family, down to the pictures of her parents' "work areas" and the drawer of jar lids. I would hope that later generations have a different story, but for a certain demographic, this book should be required reading. You are not alone.
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42 of 45 people found the following review helpful
By
David Kusumoto
on May 27, 2014
Format: Kindle Edition
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* As I write this, my 83-year-old dad is withering away in an assisted living facility, riddled with Alzheimer's. Sometimes I want my Dad to die now - because he's unaware of his suffering - and he'd cuss me out if he knew he is turning into what Roz Chast's mother describes as "a pulsating piece of protoplasm." I feel guilty feeling this way - but "Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant?" makes such forbidden thoughts feel normal.
* (BTW, don't buy the Kindle version. This title, with its colorful cartoons and photos - as well as its handsome construction as a hardcover book - truly belongs on your coffee table. I sampled the Kindle version, didn't like it, and bought the hardcover.)
* This book feels weirdly clairvoyant. It exposed my doubts, fears and paradoxical feelings about watching my parents die slowly before my eyes. I've read almost everything about the subject of aging and dying. And yet this is the first book that captures the exhausting experience of caring for aging parents, e.g., that it's sometimes gross - (see passages about hoarding, incontinence and "grime") - AND funny - (see "The Wheel of Doom" and Roz Chast's father's obsession with myriad bank books, decades old).
* The author's hand-wringing about whether there's going to be enough money to pay for her parents' care is spot on. How long will the money last if they live "X" more years vs. "Y" more years? I do these calculations every month, constantly updating and trying to prepare for the worst. If the daily care and feeding of your parents doesn't kill you - then the avalanche of paperwork and legal stuff that must be done - will.Read more ›
* (BTW, don't buy the Kindle version. This title, with its colorful cartoons and photos - as well as its handsome construction as a hardcover book - truly belongs on your coffee table. I sampled the Kindle version, didn't like it, and bought the hardcover.)
* This book feels weirdly clairvoyant. It exposed my doubts, fears and paradoxical feelings about watching my parents die slowly before my eyes. I've read almost everything about the subject of aging and dying. And yet this is the first book that captures the exhausting experience of caring for aging parents, e.g., that it's sometimes gross - (see passages about hoarding, incontinence and "grime") - AND funny - (see "The Wheel of Doom" and Roz Chast's father's obsession with myriad bank books, decades old).
* The author's hand-wringing about whether there's going to be enough money to pay for her parents' care is spot on. How long will the money last if they live "X" more years vs. "Y" more years? I do these calculations every month, constantly updating and trying to prepare for the worst. If the daily care and feeding of your parents doesn't kill you - then the avalanche of paperwork and legal stuff that must be done - will.Read more ›
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25 of 27 people found the following review helpful
By
JustMe
on May 10, 2014
Format: Kindle Edition
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Everything in this book is perfection, right down to the chapter titles (see above). Having been through the death of one parent and the decline of the other over the past year, I thought this book might be too much to bear... But it was laugh out loud, cry a little, then laugh again, punctuated by hand-flies-to-mouth gasps of recognition, and, ultimately, comfort. Nobody puts words and images together like Roz Chast.... She can do more with one panel than others do in pages.
If you can find humor in the uncomfortable and have an aging parent, or plan on aging yourself, this book is for you.
If you can find humor in the uncomfortable and have an aging parent, or plan on aging yourself, this book is for you.
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50 of 58 people found the following review helpful
By
Lucy Stone
on May 8, 2014
Format: Hardcover
2 Comments
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Whatever happened to those giveaways from banks; the blenders, toasters, clocks etc.? Roz Chast finds them in her parent's closet. Ancient supersize jars of petroleum jelly, a drawer of jar lids, a "museum of old Schick shavers" and all the detritus of a life. This book is for anyone-especially baby boomers-who have lived through the "golden years" and final decline of their elderly parents. Ms Chast, through her drawings and prose, has given us a poignant, informative and yet surprisingly humorous account of that inevitably stressful and frightening time. I found myself smiling even while my eyes teared up-so glad I found this book. What will our children find when our time comes-will they keep our ashes in their closets and is that a comforting thought?
Highly recommend- once you've read this, put it on your coffee table and bookmark pages to share with friends-they'll appreciate it.
Highly recommend- once you've read this, put it on your coffee table and bookmark pages to share with friends-they'll appreciate it.
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