BOOKLISTS: Old Age Fiction
Amis, Kingsley. THE OLD DEVILS. 1987
Set in South Wales, this novel opens as three couples at the beginning of their "golden years" find their lives turned upside down by the return, after 30 years, of successful poet Alun Weaver and his stunning wife. Weaver has made a career for himself by talking on television about "all things Welsh," including his memories of his old friends. FICTION/AMIS/KIN
Ariyoshi, Sawako. THE TWILIGHT YEARS. 1984
This novel examines the problem of caring for the elderly in a modern industrial society. The story tells of the Tachibana family, suddenly forced to care for an aged parent until his eventual death. FICTION/ARIYOSHI/SAW
Baylis, Sarah. UTRILLO'S MOTHER. 1989
"I am old and my face in the mirror is disturbing." From the opening paragraphs, Utrillo's Mother is a dramatic, witty, and occasionally savage feminist novel about the life of the French artist Suzanne Valadon. Taking off from the few known facts of her life, the novel lovingly renders one life in order to reflect on the struggles of women as artists in general. FICTION/BAYLIS/SAR
Christie, Agatha. THE MURDER AT THE VICARAGE. 1930
The octogenarian spinster from St. Mary Mead, Miss Marple, confidently announces her plan to capture the murderer of Colonel Protheroe, a truly despicable man. This is the first appearance of the always-observant Miss Marple. MYSTERY/CHRISTIE/AGA
Cleage, Pearl. I WISH I HAD A RED DRESS. 2001
Joyce has never been flamboyant; has never owned a red dress or the kind of life that goes along with it. But now, after many years of selfless service to others, she feels it's time to do something special for herself-especially since there's the unmistakable hint of romance on the wind… FICTION/CLEAGE/PEA
Edgerton, Clyde. WALKING ACROSS EGYPT. 1987
Mattie Rigsbee is 78. She has been alone since her first husband died five years ago. Like any halfway serious wife and mother, Mattie has looked forward to enjoying her grandchildren in her declining years. But unfortunately her two children have not married. Into this scene drops Wesley Benfield, who is less of a possibility than a stray dog. The whole situation inevitably ends in laughter. FICTION/EDGERTON/CLY
Elkin, Stanley. MRS. TED BLISS. 1995
After her husband's death, Dorothy Bliss stays on alone in The Towers, their Miami Beach retirement condo. Everyone continues to address her as Mrs. Ted Bliss, as if she had no identity of her own. But Dorothy quickly adapts to change, and soon she is on The Tower's A-list, hobnobbing with "Tommy Overasy," an elegant South American drug lord, and the building's chief engineer, a Yiddish-speaking Aztec. By the time hurricane Andrew bears down on southern Florida, self-sufficient Mrs. Bliss simply barricades herself in her condo and rides out the storm. FICTION/ELKIN/STA
Fuentes, Carlos. AURA. 1965
A young scholar is increasingly mystified and troubled by the inexplicable relationship between the ancient woman in whose dark and brooding house he works while preparing her long dead husband's memoirs, and her green-eyed niece with whom he has fallen in love. FICTION/FUENTES/CAR
Gardner, John. OCTOBER LIGHT. 1976
James Page, a 72-year-old Vermont farmer, chases his 80-year-old sister Sally upstairs and locks her in her bedroom. James, part savage and part Green Mountain philosopher, thinks the country has gone to hell. Sally is a liberal, believing in New York City and amnesty, and amuses herself in captivity with a "trashy" novel about marijuana smugglers. In them, Sally sees an allegory of Third World attacks on capitalism, even sees herself as the Third World and her brother as brutish capitalism. FICTION/GARDNER/JOH
Godden, Jon. IN HER GARDEN. 1981
Grace Maitland is a self-reliant 75-year-old widow, living in apparent contentment at Setons, the family home in Kent. But Grace is lonelier than she realizes. She falls in love with her newly hired gardener, 30-year-old Ben Halden, and tragedy results. FICTION/GODDEN/JON
Gordon, Mary. FINAL PAYMENTS. 1978
Isabel Moore, a once devout but now disillusioned Catholic, has spent the past 11 years in almost total isolation, caring for her invalid father who suffered a stroke after discovering Isabel in bed with one of his students. After her father's funeral, Isabel, at 30, must begin a life. The kindness of two quite different old friends, a job, and an imprudent love affair launch Isabel into the world; her relationship with a married man isolates her again, finally releasing her guilt and grief. FICTION/GORDON/MAR
Gurganus, Allan. OLDEST LIVING CONFEDERATE WIDOW TELLS ALL. 1989
99-year-old Lucille Marsden, confined to a charity nursing home in North Carolina, tells the story of her marriage to "Captain" Will Marsden, supposedly the Civil War's last survivor, whom she married when she was 15 and he over 45. She tells about her husband's experiences in the war and after, the burning of her mother-in-law's plantation by Sherman's men, and the abduction from Africa of a former Marsden slave, midwife to Lucy's nine children as well as her best friend. The novel is, however, less about the states at war than about the war between the sexes. FICTION/GURGANUS/ALL
Heller, Joseph. CLOSING TIME. 1995
A darkly comic sequel to Catch-22, the book that symbolized the absurdity of war to readers all over the world. The characters are approaching the end of their lives: Yossarian, Milo Minderbinder, the chaplain. With newcomers like Sammy Singer and Lew they expose the contradictions of politics, the general malaise of our society and the greed of big business. A book that is both funny and serious. FICTION/HELLER/JOS
Huxley, Aldous. AFTER MANY A SUMMER DIES THE SWAN. 1939
No one in the world has a life like Mr. Stoyte, a multimillionaire living in Hollywood. He is a man with everything money can buy: mansions, boats, mistresses, animals, gadgets, and the absolute best of every kind. His every whim is obeyed, every desire fulfilled, until he discovers the one thing money cannot buy which, of course, he must have immediately--the secret of eternal life. SCIENCE FICTION/HUXLEY/ALD
James, P.D. THE CHILDREN OF MEN. 1993
In this thriller set in 2021, the human race is dying out because men have become inexplicably infertile, and the elderly are ceremoniously sent to their death on mysterious rafts. FICTION/JAMES/P.D.
Jolley, Elizabeth. THE NEWSPAPER OF CLAREMONT STREET. 1981
"Weekly" is the name of a charwoman and gossip on whom the residents of Claremont Street depend for the news of the area. She has been cleaning their houses for 30 years, and her mother cleaned their houses for 30 years before that. She schemes to escape the demands of her life and the neighborhood, but her plans are compromised when she befriends the recently widowed Nastasya. FICTION/JOLLEY/ ELI
Kawabata, Yasunari. THE SOUND OF THE MOUNTAIN. 1970
Set in post-occupation Tokyo and Kamakura, this novel tells the story of an elderly businessman nearing retirement. He attempts to come to grips with the practical problems of the failing marriages of both his children and the psychological problems resulting from the deaths of his close friends. FICTION/KAWABATA/YAS
Keane, Molly. TIME AFTER TIME. 1984
This novel concerns the decaying gentry of Ireland. Sixty-something Jasper and his sisters April, May and Baby June live in the remains of their manor house; each is isolated from normal life by eccentricity and minor physical deformity; each has a much-babied pet. Into this existence comes Leda, a cousin who had once drastically influenced their lives. Now blind, Leda plans subtle revenge for imagined wrongs. FICTION/KEANE/MOL
Lessing, Doris. THE DIARIES OF JANE SOMERS. 1984
Two novels, The Diary of a Good Neighbor and If The Old Could are written in the form of the diaries of Jane Somers, a handsome, middle-aged, successful woman's magazine editor. Since the death of her husband Jane has felt emotionally disconnected. By chance she meets Maudie, a skinny, tattered, dirty scrap of humanity in her eighties, possessed of a fierce and indomitable pride. The novels tell of the developing friendship of the two women and the transforming effect it has on both. FICTION/LESSING/DOR
McFarland, Dennis. SCHOOL FOR THE BLIND. 1994
This novel chronicles the waning years of two elderly siblings, Francis and Muriel Brimm, as they reluctantly come to grips with the past and learn to accept their gradual decline. On a walk on a local golf course they find the bones of two students from the nearby school for the blind. The search for the killer's identity forces them to revive memories of their own childhood. FICTION/MCFARLAND/DEN
Sackville-West, Vita. ALL PASSION SPENT. 1931
When Lady Slane, after the death of her famous husband, shocks her family by going to live by herself in a little house in Hempstead, she is for the first time in her 88 years asserting her right to live her own life. The year of quiet reminiscences there is not without exciting moments, for a man who has loved her silently for 60 years renews his friendship, tells her of his love and then suddenly dies, leaving her his enormous fortune. She again is able to assert herself with grace and charm. FICTION/SACKVILLE-WE
Sarton, May. AS WE ARE NOW. 1973
This novel is written in the form of a diary kept by a retired schoolteacher. Mentally tough but not quite physically able to care for herself, she is deposited by relatives in a home for the aged. Subjected to subtle humiliations, petty and almost unthinkable cruelties, deprived of all mental stimulus, she fights a tough battle to preserve her dignity, then her sanity. FICTION/SARTON/MAY
Sarton, May. THE EDUCATION OF HARRIET HATFIELD. 1989
Released from a confining lesbian relationship by the death of her lover, Harriet at 60 fulfills her dream of opening a bookstore for women in a Boston working-class neighborhood. Vandalism and threats lead to an article that forces Harriet to re-evaluate her life and face its impact on others. FICTION/SARTON/ MAY
Siegel, James. EPITAPH. 2001
William Riskin, now well past his 70th birthday, reads the obituary of Jean, a onetime partner in the Three Eyes Detective Agency. Riskin discovers that Jean never really retired and that he had been working on a final case. The two partners had promised to finish one another's cases if one of them should die, and Riskin resolves to close this last file. He unearths a crime that had happened 50 years before…and was still claiming lives. Everything must be risked to bring this evil to justice. MYSTERY/SIEGEL/JAM
Spark, Muriel. MEMENTO MORI. 1958
Included in the collection The Novels of Muriel Spark, this is a very funny novel centering around the reactions of a group of elderly people-a celebrated author, an unscrupulous housekeeper, an octogenarian with an eye for women, and the inhabitants of a home for the aged--when they receive the telephone message: "Remember you must die." FICTION/SPARK/MUR
Updike, John. THE POORHOUSE FAIR. 1965
This novel concerns the lives of a handful of marvelously eccentric people in a poorhouse on the undulating plains of central New Jersey. It begins on the morning of the annual Fair, an innovation of the new and very ambitious prefect. His struggle to institutionalize old age inevitably meets the stiff opposition of those who want to individualize it. FICTION/UPDIKE/JOH
Wiesel, Elie. THE FORGOTTEN. 1992
Holocaust survivor Elhanan Rosenbaum, now living in New York and a distinguished professor with a psychiatric practice, is tragically losing his prodigious memory. While he can still remember, he creates a "back-up" by bequeathing to his son the stories of his years in the Carpathian mountains and the other cherished memories of his life. FICTION/WIESEL/ELI
White, Patrick. THE EYE OF THE STORM. 1973
The story concerns the return to their native Australia of two aging émigrés, Basil and Dorothy Hunter. The reason for their homecoming is to make sure of their inheritance from their mother, Elizabeth, who lies blind, senile and moribund at home. Only her money, they separately perceive, can save their foundering and unattached lives. Disparately loathsome, they form a conspiracy of conveniences to part that money, intact, from Elizabeth's slackening grasp. She, however, is still capable of cruelty in her helplessness. FICTION/WHITE/PAT
Wright, Eric. BURIED IN STONE: A MEL PICKETT MYSTERY. 1995
Being 60 years old doesn't make life any easier for retired Toronto policeman Mel Pickett. Here the author once again explores the uncertainties faced by his older characters. The ex-cop has built himself a cabin in the small town of Larch River, 150 miles north of Toronto. Charlotte Mercer, who runs the local diner, is the romantic interest. Then the ne'er-do-well Timmy Marlow is found dead, and Mel comes out of retirement to follow the trail. MYSTERY/WRIGHT/ERI