Probably the best book by a nonagenarian you are likely to read this year. Gould, a Down East Yankee and columnist for the Christian Science Monitor since 1942, offers a collection of short commentaries on life in an assisted living center. The book isn't simply a humorous indictment of the foibles and peculiarities of retirement home living (though there is plenty of that, from comments about food to the saga of the unopenable window and the staff refrain "There is nothing to be done about it"). The author ranges across all his 92 years to draw on memories of doctors, raising bees with his Grandfather, and the perfect tomato. The author is not a simple, genteel sort, despite the appearance of his prose. There are passages on the joys of farting humor, reproductions of the light verse with which he lampooned the failures of the management (these never survived more than three minutes on the bulletin board because they "offended the staff"), and a truly fierce (but nevertheless funny) indictment of the insurance industry. Think of this book as Robert Fulghum in a retirement home and you'll be close to it.
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The review of this Book prepared by David Loftus