“Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?”

In 2014, The New Yorker showcased “Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?,” an excerpt from Chast’s illustrated memoir about her parents’ challenging final years. Well into their nineties, the elder Chasts, a pair of retired Brooklyn teachers, resisted any acknowledgment of their own mortality, as well as efforts to prepare. With tenderness and humor, irritation and dismay, Chast captures a difficult stage of the child-parent relationship in a manner that will resonate with anyone who has cared for aging relatives, and with those who haven’t. The full-length version won the National Book Critics Circle Award for autobiography, and exemplifies one of Chast’s many gifts: what her colleague Adam Gopnik describes as the “weight beneath apparent whimsy” of her work. Roz Chast, The New Yorker

sempre piacevole (ri)leggere Roz Chast.