Can We Talk About Something More Pleasant?

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by Roz Chast

Roz Chast's debut book tackles the problem of ageing parents with her trademark humor. Chast's book provides both comfort and comedic relief for anybody dealing with the life-altering death of elderly parents. It spans several years of their lives and is conveyed through four-color cartoons, family pictures, and documents, as well as a narrative as replete with chuckles as it is with tears.

Roz used denial, evasion, and diversion when it came to her ageing mother and father. The tools that had served Roz well through her parents' seventies, eighties, and early nineties could no longer be used when Elizabeth Chast scaled a ladder to seek an old relic from the "crazy closet"—with predictable results.

While the specifics are Chast-ian in their eccentricities—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 kept Roz out of the classroom for decades—the themes are universal: adult children accepting parental roles; ageing and unstable parents leaving a family home for an institution; dealing with uncomfortable physical intimacies; managing logistics; and hiring stray children.

Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant is a stunning depiction of two lives at their end and an only kid coping as best she can. It will demonstrate the full breadth of Roz Chast's talent as a cartoonist and storyteller.