KIRKUS REVIEWA close New York?based family copes with aging and death.The title of Schine?s (Fin & Lady, 2013, etc.) 10th novel refers to the famous lines by British poet Philip Larkin: ?They fuck you up, your mum and dad. / They may not mean to, but they do.? For Joy Bergman, who's caring for her beloved but hopelessly senile and physically failing husband and whose adult children think the answer is to get her a dog, you can replace ?mum and dad? with ?son and daughter.? This kind of witticism is one of the main pleasures of this novel, which introduces us to three generations of feisty characters but doesn?t give them enough action to hold our interest. The aging, the dying, the coping, and the kvetching all seem to proceed almost as slowly as they do in real life. Every time something interesting happens, such as when one of the littlest Bergmans accidentally breaks a shop window and injures a rabbi or a tiny dog is mauled by a big ferocious one, any negative consequences are resolved by the end of the chapter. A storyline about an elderly suitor who turns up professing his lifelong adoration of Joy is muted. In lieu of a plot arc, the novel focuses on the warmth the author feels for her characters and the warmth they feel for each other. ?Daniel had never understood that you could love anyone as much as he loved Ruby and Cora. This love was new, born when they were born. Now life without that love coursing through him was unimaginable.??It?s hard to be an old Jew,? as one of the characters comments, and it?s not so exciting to read about them, either. If this is the beginning of a tsunami of books about aging by baby-boomer authors, let?s hope things pick up.

5 Stars for the humor and overall writing, 3 Stars for the pacing:

140 pages of Aaron dying was at least 70 too many.
It would have been welcome to instead fill those pages with the author's
beautifully crafted words to expand the reactions and backgrounds of
all the Seder guests, of Marta, Walter, Wanda, Elvira, the Doormen, Coco,
Cora, Ruby, Karl, and Joy's three friends.

Rounding out those characters and Gatto would make fun reading!

And well, will we see Ben grow up in a sequel,
where neither the dog nor Joy and Karl die, though they may reveal plans at the end...? ( )

Up there with her best. But for me this brought up lots of uncomfortable thoughts about my parent's aging and my own. Facing the last third of life makes me feel like a coward. ( )

Another gem from Schine. Funny, poignant, brisk, no nonsense... Caution: sure to induce a squirm in anyone with aging parents, or who is considering becoming old. Normally I am not one for dysfunctional / neurotic-contemporary-New York-family dramas, but there is a lot of love among these f***ed-up people, and even if they would drive you crazy to be around, you care about what becomes of them. ( )

As much as this book was slightly painful to read, I think I enjoyed it. The painful part came in not wanting to be like either Joy or her children but worrying that I am not that different.

The eighty-year-old Joy is written in such a way that I related to both her and her middle-aged children. It was lovely to be able to see the perspective of needing to parent a parent, and yet also seeing how one does not want to lose their children as children. ( )