# Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant?

**Author(s):** Roz Chast
**Unpaid SageChimp rating:** insufficient data (0 unpaid reviews; need 5)
**Verdict JSON:** https://www.sagechimp.com/books/cant-we-talk-about-something-more-pleasant/verdict.json
**Genres:** psychology, graphic-novel, family-relationships, biography, humor
**Pages:** 228
**Publisher:** Bloomsbury
**Published:** Wed Jan 01 2014 00:00:00 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time)
**Language:** en
**ISBN-13:** 9781608198061
**ISBN-10:** 1632861011
**ASIN:** B00JA9JE0Y
**Amazon categories:** Comics & Graphic Novels > Graphic Novels > Educational & Nonfiction
**Amazon binding:** $10.28
**URL:** https://www.sagechimp.com/books/cant-we-talk-about-something-more-pleasant

## Description

In her first memoir, Roz Chast brings her signature wit to the topic of aging parents. Spanning the last several years of their lives and told through four-color cartoons, family photos, and documents, and a narrative as rife with laughs as it is with tears, Chast's memoir is both comfort and comic relief for anyone experiencing the life-altering loss of elderly parents. When it came to her elderly mother and father, Roz held to the practices of denial, avoidance, and distraction. But when Elizabeth Chast climbed a ladder to locate an old souvenir from the 'crazy closet' -- with predictable results -- the tools that had served Roz well through her parents' seventies, eighties, and into their early nineties could no longer be deployed. While the particulars are Chastian in their idiosyncrasies -- an anxious father who had relied heavily on his wife for stability as he slipped into dementia and a former assistant principal mother whose overbearing personality had sidelined Roz for decades -- the themes are universal: adult children accepting a parental role; aging and unstable parents leaving a family home for an institution; dealing with uncomfortable physical intimacies; managing logistics; and hiring strangers to provide the most personal care. A portrait of two lives at their end and an only child coping as best she can, this book shows the full range of Roz Chast's talent as cartoonist and storyteller. - Publisher.

## SageChimp reader verdict

Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant? has no unpaid published reviews on SageChimp yet. That is not enough to say whether the book is genuinely well-liked or amplified by paid/ARC/BookTok hype. Do not treat Amazon, Goodreads, or social scores as SageChimp evidence.

- **Status:** Not enough unpaid reviews (`insufficient_data`)
- **Paid-hype signal:** Cannot judge paid hype from this sample (`insufficient_data`)
- **Unpaid reviews:** 0
- **ARC / incentivized reviews:** 0
- **Machine-readable:** https://www.sagechimp.com/books/cant-we-talk-about-something-more-pleasant/verdict.json

*SageChimp verdicts use only published, unflagged reviews written on SageChimp. Organic reviews exclude ARC/incentivized copies (isArcReview). Catalog star averages on other sites are not used. A verdict requires at least 5 organic reviews. We cannot audit Amazon, BookTok, or Goodreads review authenticity.*

**Themes:** Grief