Can We Talk About Something More Pleasant?

Chast tells a sharp and funny tale about her parents' final years. Spanning the last several years of their lives and told through four-color cartoons, family photos, and documents, this touching 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' eighties could no longer be deployed. While the particulars are Chastian 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 universal truths are even more resonant.