Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant? Discussion Guide: Home
Articles, Interviews, and Reviews
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Drawn From LifeThe New York Times Book Review, May 30, 2014.
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Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant? review – Roz Chast's grimly hilarious family memoirThe Guardian, July 13, 2014.
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Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant? by Roz ChastThe Boston Globe, May 03, 2014.
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Listen: Interview with Roz ChastNPR Books, May 08, 2014.
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Interview With Roz Chast, 2014 National Book Award Finalist, NonfictionNational Book Foundation, 2014.
Other Works by Roz Chast
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Mondo Boxo by ISBN: 006015795X -
Theories of Everything by ISBN: 9781582344232
Videos
Discussion Questions
(From Bloomsbury Publishing)
- Have you had a similar discussion with your parents and/or children about aging and long-term care plans? What was the result? At what age do you think parents and children should have this conversation?
- Which part(s) of the book, if any, could you relate to the most? Did you find yourself empathizing more with George and Elizabeth, or Roz? Did this change as you progressed through the book?
- Which aspects of the role reversal Chast depicts—the child assuming a caretaker role—were the most striking to you? What emotions did you experience as you were reading about the challenges Roz, George, and Elizabeth all faced
- Did you enjoy Chast’s technique of telling her story through illustrations? Why or why not? Were there scenes in the book that you thought were more or less effective because they were depicted in cartoons rather than in straightforward text? Which ones, and why?
- Whose experience is more frightening to you—George and Elizabeth’s, or Roz’s?
- Which parts of the memoir made you laugh? Which made you cry? Did Chast’s use of humor surprise you? Do you think it’s necessary or inappropriate to approach this type of subject with humor?
- In the chapter “The Fall,” would you have done anything differently than Roz did? Who did you sympathize with the most in this section?
- Did your perceptions of George and Elizabeth as parents, spouses, and people in general change as the book went on? If so, in what ways?
- Were there scenes in the book that you found exasperating? If so, which ones and why?
- What do you think George and Elizabeth would think about the ways in which they’re represented in the memoir?
- In your opinion, what is the greatest loss that George and Elizabeth experience as they age?
- Have you considered your own end-of-life plans? Why or why not? Was the book informational for you, and if so, what did you learn? Has reading this book changed your thinking about your own end-of-life care?
- What is your opinion of Roz’s decision to keep her parents’ ashes in her closet?
- Chast discusses at length her complicated feelings regarding her mother, and how her relationship with her mother differed greatly from the one she had with her father. Do you think this has an impact on Roz’s approach to her parents’ end-of-life care? Do you think Elizabeth was a good mother? Do you think Roz was a good daughter?
- Toward the end of the book, Roz struggles with the financial cost of her mother’s care, compounded by the fact that she’s “not living and not dying.” What are your views regarding this hardship, and her mother’s condition?
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Suggestions for further reading
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Displacement by ISBN: 9781606998106In a book that is part memoir, part travelogue and part family history, Knisley not only tries to connect with her grandparents, but to reconcile their past and present selves. She is aided in her quest by her grandfather's World War Two memoir, which is excerpted. Readers will identify with Knisley's frustration, compassion and fears, and her attempts to come to terms with mortality, as she copes with the stress of travel complicated by grandparents' frailty. -
Special Exits by ISBN: 9781606993811Special Exits chronicles the decline of Lara (Farmer's stand-in)'s elderly parents (Lars and Rachel)'s health. Set in southern Los Angeles (which makes for a terrifying sequence as blind Rachel and ailing Lars are trapped in their home without power during the 1992 Rodney King riots), backgrounds and props are lovingly detailed: these objects serve as memory triggers for Lars and Rachel, even as they eventually overwhelm them and their home, which the couple is loathe to leave. -
Maus by ISBN: 0394747232The Pulitzer Prize-winning Maus tells the story of Vladek Spiegelman, a Jewish survivor of Hitler’s Europe, and his son, a cartoonist coming to terms with his father’s story. Maus approaches the unspeakable through the diminutive. Its form, the cartoon (the Nazis are cats, the Jews mice), shocks us out of any lingering sense of familiarity and succeeds in “drawing us closer to the bleak heart of the Holocaust” (The New York Times). -
Being Mortal by ISBN: 9780805095159A prominent surgeon argues against modern medical practices that extend life at the expense of quality of life while isolating the dying, outlining suggestions for freer, more fulfilling approaches to death that enable more dignified and comfortable choices. -
Gratitude by ISBN: 9780451492937During the last few months of his life, Oliver Sacks wrote a set of essays in which he movingly explored his feelings about completing a life and coming to terms with his own death. Together, these four essays form an ode to the uniqueness of each human being and to gratitude for the gift of life.
