By Lisa Boss, Grand Rapids Public Library, Main Branch

Chast’s graphic memoir focuses on a time in her parents’ lives, when, after living in the same apartment in Brooklyn for 48 years (not hip Brooklyn, but Deep Brooklyn), they have come to the point where they are, “slowly leaving the sphere of TV commercial old age … and moving into the part of old age that was scarier, harder to talk about, and not a part of this culture.” 

Going into their nineties, the trip they’ve shared together is about to hit rough seas. And reality wallops their only daughter in the form of an after-midnight phone call. From the hospital.

Fans of Roz Chast (I’m in the “rabid” category) will recognize the skewed wit and unique, pulsating, line style from her cartoons that have been featured in the New Yorker since the ’70s. But the depth of conflicting emotions, and the insights into human hope, love, and frailty are simply breathtaking, as she has taken her work to a whole new level.

The first few pages contain the clues to the Gordion’s Knot underlying the psychological gestalt of this family. No wonder people have been so anxious in Chast’s cartoons in the New Yorker for over 30 years.

The book’s scope  is daunting: one’s identity vis-a-vis one’s parents, the hopes and dreams that were not–could not–be met, and then, suddenly, the role-reversal of the child-parent relationship. It’s a pretty deep look at some of the toughest challenges of the human condition, and Chast handles the material straight on. The humor she finds in these situations (I often laughed out loud) is painful, but kind of therapeutic. Because despite the constant deluge from the self-help industry, a resonant theme in literature continues to involve our issues with the past.

Why do things happen? What could I have done differently? Why won’t the dead leave us alone?

Deeply moving, absurdly funny, it’s a book you just can’t forget.