Roz Chast wrote a harrowing and very funny account of her parents' final years. When her mom and dad hit ninety, they began to deteriorate.
Mom wrote strange, formal poetry from her hospital bed; Dad began falling--and falling--at regular intervals. Mom told bizarre stories about her dead-in-laws coming back from hell. Dad became obsessed with various missing "bank slips."
Chast paid a woman to do the maintenance work, then reflected on how she was just another white person employing a non-white person to do unpleasant tasks. (One cartoon has Roz shrugging and saying, Guess I'll go home now and DRAW....)
This book has a great deal of gallows humor, and I think my favorite panel shows us a certain shopping area, the "aisle of doom." You can see a box of "Liqui-Food," for when you're "done with food." Plus a box of "Bed-Bath," for when you're "done with bathing."
Chast never felt anything like undiluted joy and gratitude toward her own parents, so the portraits she draws have a fascinating quality of ambivalence, and this makes me think of Philip Roth's writing about his father ("an icy valentine").
There's also the strange sensation of living through an experience *while* half-observing oneself from afar. Chast soldiers through the awkward encounters, but she also makes notes in her head, constantly. She photographs the apartment her parents lived in, and these are weird, haunting photos. ("Why did they have a drawer full of jar lids--and where were the jars???") After Mom dies, Chast sits and copes in the way that is available to her; she draws her mother's corpse, over and over again. These are startling and wonderful pages; so much is said without words. Chast is clearly obsessed with the sunken frown on her mother's face.
Did I learn anything? Unclear. But if you've gone through a death recently, Chast's brave, unsentimental book is therapeutic, at the least. It's a voice in your ear. You are not alone.
Mom wrote strange, formal poetry from her hospital bed; Dad began falling--and falling--at regular intervals. Mom told bizarre stories about her dead-in-laws coming back from hell. Dad became obsessed with various missing "bank slips."
Chast paid a woman to do the maintenance work, then reflected on how she was just another white person employing a non-white person to do unpleasant tasks. (One cartoon has Roz shrugging and saying, Guess I'll go home now and DRAW....)
This book has a great deal of gallows humor, and I think my favorite panel shows us a certain shopping area, the "aisle of doom." You can see a box of "Liqui-Food," for when you're "done with food." Plus a box of "Bed-Bath," for when you're "done with bathing."
Chast never felt anything like undiluted joy and gratitude toward her own parents, so the portraits she draws have a fascinating quality of ambivalence, and this makes me think of Philip Roth's writing about his father ("an icy valentine").
There's also the strange sensation of living through an experience *while* half-observing oneself from afar. Chast soldiers through the awkward encounters, but she also makes notes in her head, constantly. She photographs the apartment her parents lived in, and these are weird, haunting photos. ("Why did they have a drawer full of jar lids--and where were the jars???") After Mom dies, Chast sits and copes in the way that is available to her; she draws her mother's corpse, over and over again. These are startling and wonderful pages; so much is said without words. Chast is clearly obsessed with the sunken frown on her mother's face.
Did I learn anything? Unclear. But if you've gone through a death recently, Chast's brave, unsentimental book is therapeutic, at the least. It's a voice in your ear. You are not alone.
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