Promotional Information

Something completely new from New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast, a graphic memoir that walks the line between poignancy and humor as she tells the personal story of her parents' final years.

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 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.

Reviews

By turns grim and absurd, deeply poignant and laugh-out-loud funny. Ms. Chast reminds us how deftly the graphic novel can capture ordinary crises in ordinary American lives. -- Michiko Kakutani, New York Times A tour de force of dark humor and illuminating pathos about her parents' final years as only this quirky genius of pen and ink could construe them. Elle An achievement of dark humor that rings utterly true. Washington Post One of the major books of 2014 ... Moving and bracingly candid ... This is, in its original and unexpected way, one of the great autobiographical memoirs of our time. Buffalo News Better than any book I know, this extraordinarily honest, searing and hilarious graphic memoir captures (and helps relieve) the unbelievable stress that results when the tables turn and grown children are left taking care of their parents... [A] remarkable, poignant memoir. San Francisco Chronicle Very, very, very funny, in a way that a straight-out memoir about the death of one's elderly parents probably would not be ... Ambitious, raw and personal as anything she has produced. New York Times Devastatingly good ... Anyone who has had Chast's experience will devour this book and cling to it for truth, humor, understanding, and the futile wish that it could all be different. St. Louis Post Dispatch Gut-wrenching and laugh-aloud funny. I want to recommend it to everyone I know who has elderly parents, or might have them someday. Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Joins Muriel Spark's Memento Mori, William Trevor's The Old Boys, and Kingsley Amis's Ending Up in the competition for the funniest book about old age I've ever read. It is also heartbreaking. Barnes & Noble Review Revelatory... So many have faced (or will face) the situation that the author details, but no one could render it like she does. A top-notch graphic memoir that adds a whole new dimension to readers' appreciation of Chast and her work. Kirkus Reviews (starred review) Chast is at the top of her candid form, delivering often funny, trenchant, and frequently painful revelations -- about human behavior, about herself -- on every page. -- David Small, author of Stitches Roz Chast squeezes more existential pain out of baffled people in cheap clothing sitting around on living-room sofas with antimacassar doilies in crummy apartments than Dostoevsky got out of all of Russia's dark despair. This is a great book in the annals of human suffering, cleverly disguised as fun. -- Bruce McCall, author of Bruce McCall's Zany Afternoons It is in that sense of having 'nailed it' - of providing a detailed, funny, heart breaking and true description of what it is like to care for and lose elderly patients - that this book will find its greatest impact. As points for discussion and for reflection, and as a means of reassurance, this work will offer to many the validation and support of their imperfect roles as imperfect caregivers. It is a great resource. -- Kenneth Rockwood, University of Manchester, UK Age and Ageing Never has the abyss of dread and grief been plumbed to such incandescently hilarious effect. The lines between laughter and hysteria, despair and rage, love and guilt, are quavery indeed, and no one draws them more honestly, more ... unscrimpingly, than Roz Chast. -- Alison Bechdel, author of Fun Home