Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant? A Memoir

A graphic memoir by New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast chronicling her relationship with her parents, their relationship with each other, their declining final years, and their eventual deaths in their 90s. It's poignant, sad, and depressing, but also oddly charming and sometimes funny, and it captures the reality of aging, and of caring for aging parents profoundly and uncomfortably well. (It's also reminded me of the fact that I will never be able to afford to age and die with any dignity or humanity, since a half-decent "assisted living facility" costs more that I will ever, ever be able to afford, so, hey, that's a fun thing to think about!)

New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast’s graphic novel about the last few years of her parents’ lives. Both lived well into their 90s, but their advanced age meant that Roz, an only child, had to help them through the inevitable falls, loss of mental and physical acuity, a move to assisted living, hospice care, and death. Anyone who has witnessed their own parents advanced old age and death will recognize a lot of the same issues – both the lighthearted ones (how many pencils can two people own?) and the heartbreaking ones (too numerous to mention). Chast’s relationship with her domineering mother was not a good one and their fractured relationship was still apparent right up to the end. It certainly made me thankful (and lonely) for show more my own Mom. Still, a moving story told with wit, honesty, and love. show less

Roz Chast’s graphic memoir traces the steady decline into senility and serious age-related illness over their final decade of her nonagenarian parents, George and Elizabeth. Her account is frank and uncompromising, as honest and insightful as the shaky cartoons which appear in The New Yorker for which Chast is duly famous. We learn of Roz’ loving but fraught relationship with her father, who seems to have lived his entire life in a quiver of anxiety. And we experience the domineering presence of her brilliant but short-tempered mother. Their physical and eventually mental disintegration forces Roz out of her home in Connecticut back to her parents’ dingy apartment in Brooklyn. An only child, Roz takes on the responsibilities show more necessary to see her parents through extended stays in hospital, a hugely challenging move into assisted care, and from there into hospice and first one death (her father) and finally the death of her mother less than two years later.

For anyone who has been through a related period with their own aging parent or parents, this book will feel both entirely familiar and fully unique. The overall narrative arc of decline through old age toward death may be infinitely repeated, but for each of us the path is walked alone. And as we learn more about George and Elizabeth — George, as a WWII veteran who taught high school French and Spanish for most of his working life and Elizabeth, who enforced the rules at an elementary school as a vice principal as ruthlessly as she did at home with her husband and little girl — we see that they are more than mere case studies in decline. They have been, and often still are, people with whole lives that shape each step. We may only see them close up at the end, but Roz’ gaze also looks back over their lives in their previous 90 years. And it is that gaze that helps both us and her put her parents’ end into perspective.

This is a book that might easily be recommended to anyone who will eventually face the challenge of caring for ageing parents but will probably only be fully appreciated by someone who has walked that path through to the end. Recommended. show less

An amazingly honest work, where the embellishments more clearly visible being depicted through the author's drawing style than many other memoirs which have only words to work with. You know from the first few pages that it's going to be a difficult ride what with the physical decline and the dying, but the genius of the storytelling is that the things that turn out to be the most difficult are probably not the ones you expected. I found it to be a compelling read told by one of the keenest observers of the human condition. I think it some ways the particular situation the author found herself in was more difficult than many, in other ways maybe a little better than it might have been, but it is clear that when you are going through it show more what you find is something that will manage to test your limits as a human being in any case. It's easy to see how this had been nominated for the National Book Award the year it came out. It feels destined to be regarded as a future classic. show less

As honest a memoir as you could hope for, with art that owes a lot to R Crumb. Roz's intense, uneven, and eventful role as her parents' keep hits close to home. She stays away from pat or easy answers.

4.5 stars

This is a graphic novel telling of the author’s struggle as her parents aged. They didn’t like talking about death or any preparation for it, including any thought of moving someplace to make it easier for them to live – until they really had no other choice. Her parents both lived to their mid-90s and the cost of them living in the “Place” was taking a toll, in addition to her father’s mental issues and her mother’s physical ones.

It is a graphic novel, but not all pages include comic “strips”- some pages just have an illustration for the page, a few even have photographs of when Roz was cleaning out her parent’s house. A couple of pages include poems her mother wrote. She also includes some drawings she show more did of her mother in the months leading up to and including the day she died.

This was very well done, I thought. She included many thoughts and problems she had that are probably hard to talk about let alone publish in a book. It shows how hard it is to take care of parents as they age, and the personal struggles, especially when one’s relationship was not always great to begin with. Oh, the costs… wow, what a scary thought. What if your parents don’t have enough saved up to pay for the kind of care she was able to provide for her parents (and she had hard time with it)? What if you don’t have enough to help out? What happens when we get that age if we don’t have enough (and in my case, I don’t have kids to help, either)? Very very well done graphic novel. show less

The author tells the story of her aging parent's decline and eventual death in hospice in a graphic memoir form that is both humorous and heartbreakingly poignant. She is unflinchingly honest in describing the harsh realities of navigating the caregiver role: the physical and mental decline of the very old (over 90), the wrenching angst-producing decisions she had to make, and the expense and money worries, as well as the humor that can be found in some of the situations and conversations she had with her parents. I'm 12 years into the caregiving role and I found myself often laughing (sometimes through tears) in recognition.

Roz Chast is brutally honest and doesn't spare herself as she describes the conflicting emotions she has show more regarding her parents and the caregiver role, which is further complicated by a troubled mother-daughter relationship. I appreciate her honesty which makes those of us still in the midst of it all feel as if we're not alone.

I'd recommend this book to anyone who is caring for elderly parents, and for those of us who would like to make it easier on our children as we ourselves grow older. If nothing else, it will make you want to clean out your closets! show less