Helpful Score: 3
Written as the journal of an 86-year-old man trying to cope with great age while living in a rest home, this debut novel is both very simple and quite profound. A brief excerpt:
"We are statues. We are tombstones and graveyards. We are old books with no pictures and exaggerated stories about wars and soup kitchens. ...I imagine that it must be harder to grow up today than it was when I grew up. Things are a long way from simple, and the world seems less dependable. Rome didn't fall in a day. It fell slowly and unevenly over many, many years."
"We are statues. We are tombstones and graveyards. We are old books with no pictures and exaggerated stories about wars and soup kitchens. ...I imagine that it must be harder to grow up today than it was when I grew up. Things are a long way from simple, and the world seems less dependable. Rome didn't fall in a day. It fell slowly and unevenly over many, many years."
