The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey

I really thought this book was beautifully written.

Ptolemy Grey is a 91 year old black man living in Los Angeles and suffering with dementia. His primary caretaker has been killed in a drive by, and other relatives have popped up to get him to the funeral. There he meets a ward of his great/grand-niece who actually sees him for the man he was, and values him as he should be.

In all of this, a doctor has made an unethical offer - let Ptolemy try an illegal experimental drug. He will be lucid for a few days or weeks, but the drug will most likely kill him. It has definite shades of Faust.

I generally don't like it when authors write in dialects, but it works really well in this story and Mosley is a genius at writing conversations. More show more than the dialect, the word choices tell a great deal about the the characters speaking. The descriptions of Ptolemy's dementia, mental slips, and living conditions (as an elderly person living alone) are heart breaking and really well written, as are his memories of growing up and living in the Jim Crow South. show less

This is the first book I've actually read by Walter Mosley, and it did not disappoint. His writing is tight and sturdy; I knew from early in that I was in good hands. Mosley draws an exquisite internal portrait of a man whose mind is a blur; we get to watch in fine detail as the haze clears and he takes control of his life in its final days.

The characters are probably the strongest part of this book. Ptolemy himself, and the people he interacts with routinely, are portrayed with a masterful realism. There are more mythical characters as well, or perhaps I should say mythical relationships, and they are powerfully and beautifully rendered. I'm thinking especially of the time Ptolemy spends with his long-gone mentor Coydog McCann, and show more also of the acidic relationship Ptolemy develops with the doctor who treats him. There is so much color and light in these spaces, you can't help but be drawn in.

I enjoyed this immensely, and can't wait to dive into some more of Mosley's work. show less

The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey is one of the best works, and some would say the best, in the career of one of America's most accomplished authors. Walter Mosley is well-known for his Easy Rawlins detective series, featuring a black WWII vet who becomes a private detective in LA's 1940s-1960s Watts neighborhood. Insights into Watts' black community, as well as how Easy and others deal with prevalent racism, are series' features. But the stories are largely driven by their memorable characters, particularly his deadly but utterly loyal friend Raymond "Mouse" Alexander, well-played by Don Cheadle in the "Devil with a Blue Dress" movie. Over the years Mosley has ventured into many other genres, including literary novels, history, philosophy, show more erotica and science fiction. Among his non-Easy works, two of my favorite novels are Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned, centered around the remarkable Socrates Fortlow, an ex-con (due to a crime of passion) who is trying to make it in the straight world, and RL's Dream, haunted by famed real life bluesman Robert "RL" Johnson, who supposedly acquired his supernatural blues skills in a deal with the devil. Mosley has a restless and far-ranging mind, and in Ptolemy Grey takes on aging and dementia, and the restorative powers of love late in life.

Ptolemy Grey, 91 years old, lives alone in a filthy LA apartment where he refuses to enter the bedroom he shared with his beloved deceased wife, and sleeps under a table amidst years of hoarded detritus. He has begun to lose track of daily life and how to take care of himself, keeping the radio and tv on at all times as company. When the great-grand-nephew who was providing some care to him is killed in a drive-by, a different niece's son shows up to help him, and raises Ptolemy's suspicions. Having had a measure of success in life, Ptolemy has become a chore to his family, and vulnerable to being taken advantage of.

The seemingly hopeless, degenerating circumstances begin to change when he meets teenage Robyn Small at the funeral, a girl who has been taken in by the family and recognizes his goodness and integrity. She proceeds to resurrect his apartment from the filth, and gets him to a doctor. The doctor offers him a Faustian bargain, an experimental drug that will sharpen his faculties but likely shorten his life, in exchange for receiving his body for study once he dies. As Ptolemy begins to recall his past life, we learn of his mentor Coydog, who was lynched for stealing from a white man and hid the loot somewhere known only by Ptolemy. Desperation leading to thievery, and whether any good can ever come of it, is one of the book's main themes, as is the importance of having someone to trust. Ptolemy also is looking to avenge the death of his great-grand-nephew, which may have been personal rather than gang-related as assumed.

The details of Ptolemy's dementia are credible and captivating. Mosley has said the book was inspired by his mother's five year descent into dementia. The book addresses the strain on families when this happens, and the plight of the demented. It also addresses the violence that can be triggered by need or avarice. But the reason this novel rises to greatness is the love between honest and strong Robyn, and the Ptolemy she recognizes even when he can barely recognize himself. As Ptolemy says, if she were twenty years older and he forty years younger, they would marry. She restores the dignity he had lost, and in turn finds generosity and a new kind of safety in his innate decency. The powerful message is it is never too late. For love, or for justice in an often unjust life.

Some quotations from the book:

“That’s how Ptolemy imagined the disposition of his memories, his thoughts: they were still his, still in the range of his thinking, but they were, many and most of them, locked on the other side of a closed door that he’d lost the key for. So his memory became like secrets held away from his own mind. But these secrets were noisy things; they babbled and muttered behind the door, and so if he listened closely he might catch a snatch of something he once knew well.”

“The great man say that life is pain," Coydog had said over eighty-five years before. "That mean if you love life, then you love the hurt come along wit' it. Now, if that ain't the blues, I don't know what is.”

“That's how powerful you are, girl...You pretty, but pretty alone is not what people see. You the kinda pretty, the kinda beauty, that's like a mirror. Men and women see themselves in you, only now they so beautiful that they can't bear to see you go.” show less

Ptolemy Grey is almost past the point of no return on a decline into poverty, dementia and filth. His mind doesn’t play straight with him, the nephew (or is it grandson?) who has taken minimal care of him by escorting him to the bank and the grocery store on a semi-regular basis hasn’t been seen now for three weeks (or is it longer?), his stock of canned tuna is nearly gone and his toilet doesn’t work. As if all that weren’t enough, whenever he ventures out of his apartment alone, a manic neighbor woman with a heavy habit attempts to mug him for his pension money. Just when this story seems to be too grim to continue with, Ptolemy Grey is visited by nothing less than an angel in the person of an 18-year-old orphan who has been show more staying with his niece. This beautiful young woman takes on the job of bringing Pitypapa Grey back to the world, to live in it fully for the time he has left. Is she too good to be true? Should we trust her, or does she have an ulterior motive? When she takes him to a doctor who is conducting an experimental drug trial, is she selling his body to the devil, or saving his soul? Oh, this is a fine piece of writing. If you don’t love Ptolemy Grey and hold your breath waiting to see if he will rise to the final challenge he sets up for himself, look to your own soul. It needs your attention. show less

He only had one chair, and that had a book, a glass of water, and three stones he’d found that day at the park on it. They were blond stones, a color he’d never seen in rock and so he picked them up and brought them home, to be with them for a while.

That’s exactly why I read Walter Mosley -- to “be awhile” with his characters, whose situations and moral complexities I always think I haven’t seen, and whose unfamiliarity always softens into a fond recognition.

Here it’s 2006 and 91-year-old Ptolemy Grey lives alone in squalor in south-central LA. He has a small pension, he has a radio and a TV tuned 24/7 to a dueling background of classical music and cable news, and he has sporadic contact with extended family two and three show more generations down the line. But his home and mind have declined since his wife died decades ago, and now dementia keeps him obsessed about the ages-ago deaths of a childhood friend in a house fire and the lynching of a beloved mentor. So when another loved one dies in street violence, and a new young friend awakens Ptolemy's spirit, he embarks on a mission to protect his loved ones before his own time comes.

Mosley narrates almost completely in scenes here -- from Ptolemy’s perspective, a mix of confusion and distraction co-mingled with vestiges of philosopher and keen observer. A key plot point about experimental drugs did require a suspension of disbelief ... or maybe it just required me to fully enter a world where the rules don’t resemble the ones I know, and to appreciate the point of this book: being awhile with this man in that world. I loved every page of it.

(Review based on an advance reading copy provided by the publisher.) show less

Walter Mosley has two currents in which his books are found. One, the Easy Rawlins detective stories, have the funky elegance of Chandler; the other, in which black men have the names of ancient Greeks, is his own, and is the more valuable of the two. This book falls into the second group, and is difficult to speak of because the book itself disciplines one's language. It tells its story clearly but in a hushed rustle; it performs the terrible tricks of memory in an aging mind whose loved people have died. Not only do you believe this voice, this mind, you become it. A resonant book, whose resonance is achieved by what's left out as well as what's included.

Three months to finish but I truly believe it could have taken thirty and I wouldn't have forgotten a thing. The book moved me throughout but it was the next to last paragraph that finally saw me crack. Man, oh man, this is going to the favorites.

"double-u ara eye en gee"

"Her hair was tied back and her eyes saw things that he wanted to see."

"'At some time it come to you that you only thinkin’ ’bout the past', Coy had once said to him. 'When you young you think about tomorrow, but when you old you turn your eyes and ears to yesterday.'"

"'The great man say that life is pain,' Coydog had said over eighty-five years before. 'That mean if you love life, then you love the hurt come along wit’ it. Now, if that ain’t the blues, I show more don’t know what is.'" show less