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

#1 New York Times Bestseller

2014 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST

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.

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' seventies, eighties, and into their early nineties could no longer be deployed.

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; managing logistics; 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 will show the full range of Roz Chast's talent as cartoonist and storyteller.

Author: Roz Chast
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
Published: 05/06/2014
Pages: 240
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.95lbs
Size: 9.55h x 7.80w x 0.90d
ISBN: 9781608198061


Award: New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association Award - Winner
Award: New England Book Award - Winner
Award: National Book Awards - Finalist
Award: Kirkus Prize - Winner
Award: L.A. Times Book Prize - Finalist
Award: National Book Critics Circle Award - Winner
Award: Books for a Better Life - Winner
Award: Thurber Prize for American Humor - Finalist
Award: Indies Choice Book Awards - Honor Book


Review Citation(s):
Kirkus Reviews 02/01/2014
Library Journal 03/15/2014 pg. 103
Publishers Weekly 03/10/2014
Entertainment Weekly 05/09/2014 pg. 69
Booklist 05/15/2014 pg. 43
Shelf Awareness 05/13/2014
People Weekly 05/19/2014 pg. 52
New York Times Book Review 06/01/2014 pg. 17
New York Times Book Review 06/08/2014 pg. 34
Publishers Weekly Best Books 11/03/2014 pg. 34
NY Times Notable Bks of Year 12/07/2014 pg. 27
LJ Best Books of Year 12/01/2014 pg. 35
Kirkus Best Nonfiction 12/01/2014 pg. 12
Entertainment Weekly 12/12/2014 pg. 74
New York Times Book Review 12/14/2014 pg. 10
People Weekly 12/22/2014 pg. 46
Entertainment Weekly 03/06/2015 pg. 72

About the Author
Roz Chast grew up in Brooklyn. Her cartoons began appearing in the New Yorker in 1978. Since then, she has published more than one thousand cartoons in the magazine. She has written and illustrated many books, including the national bestseller Going into Town, What I Hate: From A to Z, and the collections of her own cartoons The Party After You Left and Theories of Everything. She is the editor of The Best American Comics 2016 and the illustrator of Calvin Trillin's No Fair! No Fair! and Daniel Menaker's The African Svelte, all published in Fall 2016. She was awarded the Harvey Award Hall of Fame Award.