Can’t we talk about something more PLEASANT?

Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?
By Roz Chast

This acutely observed graphic memoir provides many moments of laugh out loud observations by New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chaste. Her experience of dealing with her ageing parents and tackling difficult subjects with them is humorously and beautifully illustrated in the pages of her book. Although it is very much a personal journey, I think a lot of people will find it resonates with them. You will laugh, maybe cry at her searingly honest recount of being an only child to older parents, George and Elizabeth, to whom the book is dedicated.

Presented in a comic book style, this is a very visual ‘read’ and you could probably get through the 227 pages very quickly.  The author doesn’t shy away from the difficulties she sometimes felt about her relationship with her mother or her reluctance to visit them in their native Brooklyn, but that is what is so lovely about the book. It is a very honest account – and even though we don’t all have Jewish parents living in Brooklyn – there are definitely elements of the loveable pair in so many people we do know. This book is for everyone with parents.