“Can’t we talk about something more pleasant?” (Now Available@ the HHSL)

We are pleased to announce the arrival of Roz Chast’s bittersweet graphic novel about caring for her aging parent, Can’t we talk about something more pleasant? : a memoir.

“In her latest book, “Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?,” Ms. Chast tackles the subject of her parents, writing with a new depth and amplitude of emotion. Her account of growing up with them in Brooklyn as an only child and her efforts, decades later, to help them navigate the jagged shoals of old age and ill health, is by turns grim and absurd, deeply poignant and laugh-out-loud funny. Her fondness for the exclamatory (expressed in capital letters, underlined words and multiple exclamation points) is cranked up several notches here, and her familiar, scribbly people go from looking merely frazzled and put-upon to looking like the shrieking figure in Munch’s “The Scream” — panicked and terrified as they see the abyss of loss and mortality looming just up the road.” (Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times)

Want to learn more? Check out this fabulous intreview with Roz Chast on NPR’s “Fresh Air”: http://www.npr.org/2014/05/08/310725572/a-cartoonists-funny-heartbreaking-take-on-caring-for-aging-parents

You can find Can’t we talk about something more pleasant? : a memoir in the HHSL Book Stacks located on the 5th floor (WT 120 C489c 2014).