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Books

The cruellest present you could give a hated old in-law

A review of Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?: A Memoir, by Roz Chast. Nothing is sacred in this graphic memoir of the author’s parents

5 July 2014

9:00 AM

5 July 2014

9:00 AM

Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?: A Memoir Roz Chast

Bloomsbury, pp.240, £18.99, ISBN: 9781608198061

It takes a special sort of talent to be able to make drawings of your own 97-year-old mother on her deathbed funny. The person with that gift is Roz Chast. Subscribers to the New Yorker will already be familiar with her marvellous cartoons, which often feature elderly and over-neurotic parents shouting dire imprecations to their rather dazed and mild-looking adult offspring.

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