Can't We Talk about Something More Pleasant? by Roz Chast Review

Roz Chast relates the story of her 93 year old parents’ final years in her excellent comics memoir, Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?

I’ve seen this book on shelves for years now and every time I’ve looked at it I’ve thought that I’ll probably like reading it but never picked it up because I thought it’d be a downer; I was right - I loved it! - but I was wrong in thinking it’d be depressing. It is in a way - how could the story of two elderly people slowly dying not be? - but the book is much more than that.

Once I started reading, I couldn’t stop, despite knowing how it was going to end, which tells you how gifted a storyteller Chast is. The book balances unexpectedly amusing moments with the unflinching realities of extreme old age. Like her dad’s weird obsession over his bankbooks or his strange diet counterbalanced with his sad senility and general helplessness, and her mother’s surreal and funny stories being the product of her mind failing. It’s an odd blend of informative and humorous but it works perfectly.

It’s also a poignant - but not overly sentimental - portrait of Chast’s parents. We get to know her nervous, technically incompetent and increasingly senile father and her authoritarian mother with whom she has a complex relationship with. Chast jumps from her childhood to the present, telling anecdotes to illustrate their characters so that the reader gets a strong sense of who they were.

Chast is also very honest about her own feelings towards them - she loves them but she also can’t stand being around them, particularly as they have no interests in common and she has a family of her own to look after. But despite the frustrations that her parents’ various illnesses bring, her deep love of both is always very clear and she honours them beautifully here.

And I’m glad she didn’t go overboard with the emotion; not to make light of their passing but they were very old - well into their 90s - never suffered major illnesses until the end and had a happy marriage for decades. They lived good, long lives and death awaits all of us. It’s not nearly as tragic as, say, a ten year old cancer patient, whose existence has only ever been pain, dying, y’know?

The way Chast told her story was masterful. After her father’s death, her mother ends up losing control of her bowels and makes a mess of Chast’s downstairs lounge and bathroom - this episode is told through text only, no pictures, to give her mother some dignity over this undignified episode. After her mother’s death, there’s a sequence of portraits Chast drew of her mother on her deathbed, no words, only pictures, which say more than enough. It’s a very effective and tasteful use of the comics medium.

I put off reading this for so long because I suspected that I’d see a lot of myself and my own parents in this book, and I did to a degree. I’m not gonna go into my own stuff because it’s nothing compared to what Chast and her parents went through but I can see both of my folks already having problems in their late ‘60s/early ‘70s and I can only imagine it’ll get worse in the years to come. And I know I’ll be as neurotic as Chast was regarding my feelings towards them and the way they handle their health but I think I’m a little better prepared for it all having read this.

It’s hard for everyone to think about the end and the difficulties old age presents to us all but Roz Chast somehow grounds it all in a very accessible and, yes, entertaining way without sugarcoating any of it - a helluva achievement. It might be heavy-going for anyone who’s lost a parent recently but, as unlikely as it sounds, Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant? is an absolutely corking book that I’d recommend to anyone looking for a great read.