Kidder, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Soul of a New Machine , spent a year observing the residents of Linda Manor, a 121-bed nursing home in Northampton, Mass. He offers respectful, moving portraits of elderly people confronting their decaying minds and bodies and imminent deaths as they go about their daily routines in a facility that for most of them will be, as Kidder notes, ``their last place on earth.'' Obese Winifred sobs because she has to be lifted mechanically from her bed; Earl, struggling with a half-dead heart, begs his wife to take him home; Eleanor directs her friends in a minstrel show; and Dan, who at 65 is one of the youngest residents, spends much of his day sucking oxygen from a tube and telephoning his senator's office to complain about his breakfast eggs. Among the addled residents are able-bodied Zita, who obsessively paces the hallways and tries to pick flowers depicted in the carpet's design. Kidder spotlights the friendship that blooms between Joe, an irascible 72-year-old stroke victim, and gentle Lou, 90 and almost blind, who grieves for his deceased wife, tells rambling stories about his past and worries about Joe. BOMC selection; author tour. (Sept.)
A Pulitzer Prize-winning author's “touching, funny and inspiring” true story of daily life in a New England nursing home (The New York Times).
Ninety-year-old Lou quit school after the eighth grade, worked for the rest of his life, and stayed with the same woman for nearly seventy years. Seventy-two-year-old Joe was chief probation officer in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, holds a law degree, and has faced the death of a son and the raising of a mentally challenged daughter. Now, the two men are roommates in a nursing home. Despite coming from very different backgrounds, the two become close friends.
Focusing on these two men as well as introducing us to the other aging residents of Linda Manor in Northampton, Massachusetts, literary journalist Tracy Kidder examines the sorrows and joys of growing older and the universal struggle to find meaning in the face of mortality. From the New York Times-bestselling author and National Book Award-winning author of The Soul of a New Machine, this is an extraordinary look inside an often-hidden world.
“As in his Pulitzer Prize-winning The Soul of a New Machine, House, and the best-selling Among Schoolchildren, Kidder reveals his extraordinary talent as a storyteller by taking the potentially unpalatable subject of life in a nursing home and making it into a highly readable, engrossing account.” -Library Journal
“Rich detail and true-to-the-ear dialogue let the brave and determined elderly speak for themselves-and for the continually surprising potential of the human spirit.” -Kirkus Reviews
A Pulitzer Prize-winning author's “touching, funny and inspiring” true story of daily life in a New England nursing home (The New York Times).
Ninety-year-old Lou quit school after the eighth grade, worked for the rest of his life, and stayed with the same woman for nearly seventy years. Seventy-two-year-old Joe was chief probation officer in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, holds a law degree, and has faced the death of a son and the raising of a mentally challenged daughter. Now, the two men are roommates in a nursing home. Despite coming from very different backgrounds, the two become close friends.
Focusing on these two men as well as introducing us to the other aging residents of Linda Manor in Northampton, Massachusetts, literary journalist Tracy Kidder examines the sorrows and joys of growing older and the universal struggle to find meaning in the face of mortality. From the New York Times-bestselling author and National Book Award-winning author of The Soul of a New Machine, this is an extraordinary look inside an often-hidden world.
“As in his Pulitzer Prize-winning The Soul of a New Machine, House, and the best-selling Among Schoolchildren, Kidder reveals his extraordinary talent as a storyteller by taking the potentially unpalatable subject of life in a nursing home and making it into a highly readable, engrossing account.” -Library Journal
“Rich detail and true-to-the-ear dialogue let the brave and determined elderly speak for themselves-and for the continually surprising potential of the human spirit.” -Kirkus Reviews
Editorial Reviews
Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940173838940 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Brilliance Audio |
| Publication date: | 08/25/2008 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
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