Roz Chast

Celebrates the final years of the author's aging parents' lives through cartoons, family photos, and documents that reflect the author's struggles with caregiver challenges.

A Memoir

Can't We Talk about Something More Pleasant?

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Gavin

Honest, unsentimental, much stronger than it looks. I like her parents more than her, but then she’s showing herself at her worst, in situations where all of us struggle to be likeable, to like ourselves.

Jeannette Ordas

Such a wonderful, personal look at dealing with aging parent....especially when your parents aren't the easiest to get along with. Illustrations mixed with old photos - a great graphic memoir that would make a great gift to several people I know. As someone who has dealt with some of the same things, it's an honest, hilarious, scary and sad. 100% great.

Dana Kraft

I appreciated the honesty of this book. I expected that her story would have more obvious and specific similarities to that of our family. It had very few. That said, she was honest about the difficulty of wearing the many hats required to take care of aging parents, and that is what I empathized with the most.

Super-quick read, too.

#1 New York Times Bestseller 2014 National Book Award Finalist Winner of the inaugural 2014 Kirkus Prize in nonfiction Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award Winner of the 2014 Books for a Better Life Award Winner of the 2015 Reuben Award from National Cartoonists Society In her first memoir, New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast brings her signature wit to the topic of aging parents. Spanning the last several years of their lives and told through four-color cartoons, family photos, and documents, and a narrative as rife with laughs as it is with tears, Chast's memoir is both comfort and comic relief for anyone experiencing the life-altering loss of elderly parents. While the particulars are Chast-ian 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 themes are universal: adult children accepting a parental role; aging and unstable parents leaving a family home for an institution; dealing with uncomfortable physical intimacies; and hiring strangers to provide the most personal care. An amazing portrait of two lives at their end and an only child coping as best she can, Can't We Talk about Something More Pleasant shows the full range of Roz Chast's talent as cartoonist and storyteller.

Vivian

Hilarious, touching, realistic and raw. 

 Can't We Talk about Something More Pleasant?  is a graphic memoir that recounts how Roz dealt with her aging parents (both in their 90s), who refused to talk about death until they were too frail to live on their own. Roz witnessed her parents' slow decline in health and drawn-out death, and shared her honest concerns on financial burdens. It was especially resonating when she talked about her emotional distance with her mother, the wish for a better relationship and the final acceptance of it is what it is.

No doubt many of us will face these issues, either with our parents or with ourselves eventually. We don't talk about aging enough.

Nadine 

I don't often dole out 5 starts but this book is just exceptional. It hits all the buttons - gritty, funny, sad, poignant and so terribly relevant - particularly if you have aging parents and even more so if your relationship with your parents is ambivalent ...

Jennifer Dieter

I heard an interview with Roz on NPR and knew I needed to read this book. While my parents aren't near the end of their lives, I know the time will come and Roz does a beautiful job of recording the ups and downs of caring for her elderly parents. She perfectly balances humor with sadness and sentimentality. This book is unapologetically honest, and I appreciate Roz's willingness to use her talent for storytelling to open up about this time in her life. It will let others know they are not alone when faced with the same complicated emotions that occur during the end of life.

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

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