All Things ConsoledAll Things Consoled

#1 bestselling novelist Elizabeth Hay has written a poignant, complex, and hugely resonant memoir about the shift she experienced between being her parents' daughter to their guardian and caregiver.Jean and Gordon Hay were a formidable pair. She was an artist and superlatively frugal; he was a proud and well-mannered schoolteacher with a temper that could be explosive. Elizabeth, their oldest daughter, was said to be a difficult and selfish child. Elizabeth always suspected she would end up caring for her parents in their final years, a way of making up for the sins of her childhood, proving herself to be a good daughter after all. But as her parents, who had been ferociously independent people, became increasingly dependent on her, their lives changed utterly and so did hers. Philip Roth once said, "Old age is a massacre." All Things Consoled takes you inside the massacre.     In this startlingly beautiful memoir, with brutal candor and irresistible wit, Elizabeth Hay offers insight into the exquisite agony of a family's dynamics—sibling rivalries, miscommunications that spur decades of resentment all matched by true and genuine love and devotion—and reaches a deep understanding of the most unforgettable characters she will ever know, the vivid giants who were her parents.