Crazy Age: Thoughts on Being Old - Hardcover

Miller, Jane

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1844086496 ISBN 13: 9781844086498

Publisher: Virago UK, 2012

Synopsis

Deeply thoughtful, wry, and resilient, this fascinating and absorbing book about growing older is a literate and life-enhancing look at what all of us—if we are lucky—can aspire to "I like being old at least as much as I liked being middle aged and a good deal more than I liked being young."  Like Diana Athill's Somewhere Towards the End, this series of perceptive and warm-hearted essays is an incisive look at aging. Jane Miller dips back and forth easily between the personal and the literary, discussing the deep sustaining joys of friendship; the treatment of old age in literature from Tolstoy to Updike, Wharton to de Beauvoir; the loss of interest in such once-central preoccupation as fashion and sex; physical ailments; and exactly how age changes others' perceptions of one, including within one's own family. This reflective, intimate memoir beautifully examines and rethinks what it means to be old in a culture which prides youth and views old age as a slow decline towards the end of life.

About this title

About the Author:

Jane Miller first worked in publishing, then as an English teacher and finally at the London University Institute of Education. She retired as professor emeritus in 1998.

Review:

"A balm to tired spirits and a revelation to those who are fearful of growing old. Jane Miller's 11 essays unfold into an acceptance of a world which its author finds full of comfort and pleasure, friendships and books . . . a warm-hearted book, full of the good things age can bring."  —Guardian

"There's been a spate of books about age. . . . [this] is the latest and definitely one of the best. . . . her writing is so fluid and amusing that you mostly forget that old age is supposed to be such a gloom.  . . . If anyone doubts that old age can actually be interesting, this is the book for them."  —Observer

About this edition

• Publisher: Virago UK
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 1844086496
• ISBN 13: 9781844086498
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 248