GROWING OLD : Notes On Aging with Something Like Grace
Elizabeth Marshall ThomasBRAND NEW, PAPERBACK
RM24.00
A Widowed Great-Grandmother Looks Back Upon Her Life & Offers Straightforward Advice And Humorous Analysis For Readers Approaching Old Age – “A Venture To The Unknown”
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Description
From the revered author of the bestselling The Hidden Life of Dogs, a witty, engaging, life-affirming account of the joy, strength, and wisdom that comes with age.
Elizabeth Marshall Thomas has spent a lifetime observing the natural world, chronicling the customs of pre-contact hunter-gatherers and the secret lives of deer and dogs. In this book, the capstone of her long career, Thomas, now eighty-eight, turns her keen eye to her own life. The result is an account of growing old that is at once funny and charming and intimate and profound, both a memoir and a life-affirming map all of us may follow to embrace our later years with grace and dignity.
A charmingly intimate account and a broad look at the social and historical traditions related to aging, Growing Old explores a wide range of issues connected with growing older, from stereotypes of the elderly as burdensome to the methods of burial humans have used throughout history to how to deal with a concerned neighbor who assumes you’re buying cat food to eat for dinner.
Thomas, who claims to have cheated death four times (once in Namibia when a lion charged at her), isn’t afraid of dying, and she doesn’t mince words when describing funerals, burial procedures, or facilities for the aged. She finds her failing memory fascinating—particularly how she can’t always recall people’s names, but the Finnish word for sugar, which she learned from childhood caregivers, unexpectedly surfaces.
She touches on the challenge of technology, losing her hearing, and breaking a hip as she shares some of her unusual experiences, among them living among the San in South Africa and treasuring a tiger turd she keeps in the freezer. This book is like a conversation with a dear friend, sharing both sorrows and laughter, as she contemplates how she is navigating old age (the author is 88) and still thumbing her nose at convention.
She offers practical tips, such as scoping out retirement communities before it’s time to relocate, maintaining social ties, and keeping busy “with something you like.” Marshall is an inspiring example of a life well lived, and her sense of humor, honesty, and curiosity will resonate with aging readers.
Written with the wit of Nora Ephron’s I Feel Bad About My Neck and the lyrical beauty and serene wisdom of When Breath Becomes Air, Growing Old is an expansive and deeply personal paean to the beauty and the brevity of life that offers understanding for everyone, regardless of age.
This book is rich with stories from the author’s fascinating life and precious insights that are full of wisdom, strength, and infectious joy. Infused with the author’s vast knowledge of how animals and people have handled late-life challenges, this satisfying work is an immersion into the flow of the natural world, a flow toward death that people in their later years can savor instead of trying to control or change.
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KIRKUS REVIEW :
The 88-year-old author offers an honest take on what old age is really like.
In her latest, anthropologist Thomas (The Hidden Life of Life: A Walk Through the Reaches of Time, 2018, etc.) turns her curiosity about all things natural toward a subject that many choose to ignore, willfully or not: “Why write a book about old age? Nobody wants it. Nobody likes it.” However, she writes, “the aging process is an essential part of the human story, and it’s not for the faint-hearted. It’s as strange as it is captivating—a venture to the unknown.”
In a plainspoken narrative, the author covers a variety of topics, including gravesites and cemeteries, the pros and cons of cremation and burial, the physical changes her body has gone through during her long life, independent living, assisted living, home health aides, and the benefits and pitfalls of living alone, as Thomas does on a farm in New Hampshire.
The author encourages everyone, old and young, to properly prepare for death and to leave your final wishes in written form so they can be carried out efficiently. With each age-related topic, Thomas writes candidly and with occasional dark humor, sharing both the good and the bad, which includes such expected ills as memory loss and the slow decline of her physical abilities.
Given her experiences, the author is insightful—if not groundbreaking—on most topics. In some of her more meandering prose, Thomas shares snippets of information about her previous adventures, which might lead readers to search out her other books.
In this one, the author provides readable, forthright discussions of aging that will resonate most with older readers. Though not earth-shattering in any way, the narrative shows all readers that “death is the price we pay for life.”
A straightforward and sometimes humorous analysis of the pros and cons of old age.
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About the Author :
One of the most widely read American anthropologists, Elizabeth Marshall Thomas has observed dogs, cats, and elephants during her half-century-long career. In the 1980s Thomas studied elephants alongside Katy Payne—the scientist who discovered elephants’ communication via infrasound. In 1993 Thomas wrote The Hidden Life of Dogs, a groundbreaking work of animal psychology that spent nearly a year on the New York Times bestseller list. Her book on cats, Tribe of Tiger, was also an international bestseller. She lives in Peterborough, New Hampshire, on her family’s former farm, where she observes deer, bobcats, bear, and many other species of wildlife.
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