Crazy Age: Thoughts on Being Old

Description

Ever since I have inhabited old age, I have looked and listened, mostly in vain, for news of what it is like for others who inhabit it too. Naturally, I'm interested in its well-known depredations, the physical and mental ones that people in their forties and fifties so publicly dread. And who would not delight in the theatrical props of old age - the pills and sticks, the shrieking hearing aids and the tricks for countering the loss of names and threads and glasses. But that's not all. I have a fond hope that in old age there may be new kinds of time and of pleasure, perhaps even new kinds of vitality and that, though we forget and muddle and fail to hear things, there may be moments when we truly understand what's going on for the first time. But then I've always been a late developer.' Deeply thoughtful, wry and resilient, this fascinating and absorbing book about growing older is a life-enhancing look at what all of us - if we are lucky - can aspire to.

Jane Miller first worked in publishing, then as an English teacher and finally at the London University Institute of Education. She retired as Professor Emeritus in 1998.

A mind so subtle and well furnished, Jane Miller writes so well -- Diana Athill A wonderful book that everyone who cares about writing, about living, will want to read. Growing old is an under-described thing in writing but when I read Crazy Age I wanted to shout from the rooftops -- Andrew O'Hagan Jane Miller's writing is so fluid and amusing that you mostly forget that old age is supposed to be such a gloom . . . If anyone doubts that old age can actually be interesting, this is the book for them -- Katharine Whitehorn * Observer *