Elderlit

Maybe it's fear of aging, or failure of imagination, but writers rarely represent seniors well in novels. Often they just serve up a bowlful of tired old stereotypes about the elderly: loss, neediness, dementia, arthritis, heart attacks, irascibility, computer illiteracy, in-your-face quirkiness, depression, death, chronicles of decline, the senior as baggage. We rarely do our own talking; instead we get talked about, by family members, caregivers, or health care professionals. It's hard to find authentic senior voices. What would an authentic voice talk about? Well, it could capture the richness of the aging mind, as it reaps the benefits of a lifetime of experience and observation, shedding conventions, synthesizing knowledge, crafting new well-informed perspectives, thinking deeply and creatively, accepting life's disorder, making peace: the unsung joys of growing old. Or it could capture the flip side: nurturing resentments to the bitter end, coming face to face with ugly realities long denied, realizing that we were wrong all along, that there will be no happy ending. Or it might capture us just living as we have always done, being the same person we've always been, not changing much at all. Maybe it takes senior writers to do this well. Now that we're living longer, I hope we will find more writers continuing to write in old age, providing those authentic voices, speaking for ourselves and reflecting our own experience. Here are some of the books that I found to be thoughtful portrayals of aging:

• Exit lines, by Joan Barfoot. Four very different people become friends in a retirement home. We follow their separate and mingled voices as they deal with institutional living, patronizing staff, adult children, death and dying, Thoughtful, sensitive, and funny in all the right places.
• The innocent traveller, by Ethel Wilson. Traces the life of the unfailingly cheerful Topaz Edgeworth, who grows up in England, emigrates to Vancouver, lives through the Depression and the first world war, and emerges from it all utterly untouched. Always ebullient, enthusiastic, and oblivious, she remains happy to the end, then disappears in death with no traces left behind.
• A morbid taste for bones, by Ellis Peters. The first in the series of medieval mysteries featuring Brother Cadfael, a Benedictine monk. He enters the cloister after an active life as a soldier and crusader, and this worldly experience, combined with his natural curiosity, understanding of human nature, and strong sense of justice help him solve crimes in twelfth-century Britain.
• The murder at the vicarage, by Agatha Christie. The first novel featuring detective Jane Marple, whose public persona as a doddering old dear hides a razor-sharp mind and deep understanding of human motives.
• The remains of the day, by Kazuo Ishiguro. Stevens, a loyal English butler, discovers that the principles by which he has lived his life were misguided. He had not realized that his employer was a fascist or that Miss Kenton, the housekeeper, was in love with him.
• The sense of an ending, by Julian Barnes. The main character, retired man Tony Webster, receives a bequest that forces him to reestablish contact with friends and acquaintances from his youth and provides a brutal reality check on his carefully crafted persona.
• Stone angel, by Margaret Laurence. Hagar Shipley, 90 years old, stubborn, critical, unloving, fights against being placed in a nursing home.
• Stone mattress, by Margaret Atwood. Short stories, most featuring elderly characters. Lots of fantasy fiction components, talking ghosts, other-worldly creatures. Wonderfully clever, sly and funny, especially about boomer nostalgia and growing old in a young world.
• Tuck everlasting, by Natalie Babbitt. A children's book. In 1880s America, 10-year-old Winnie meets a family who have accidentally drunk from a local spring that gives them eternal life; they never age or die. Sensitive, lyrical, beautifully written exploration of mortality and the cycle of life.
• The unlikely pilgrimage of Harold Fry, by Rachel Joyce. Retired and retiring man gets a letter from an old dying colleague, goes out to mail her a postcard, then keeps on walking over 600 miles to her hospice. Meets people along the way, gets inspired, gets abused, revisits his very ordinary life and sees it through new eyes.