ALL THINGS CONSOLED

#1 bestselling novelist Elizabeth Hay has written a poignant, complex, and hugelyresonant 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 superlativelyfrugal; he was a proud and well-mannered schoolteacher with a temper that couldbe explosive. Elizabeth, their oldest daughter, was said to be a difficult and selfishchild. Elizabeth always suspected she would end up caring for her parents in theirfinal years, a way of making up for the sins of her childhood, proving herself to bea good daughter after all. But as her parents, who had been ferociouslyindependent people, became increasingly dependent on her, their lives changedutterly and so did hers. Philip Roth once said, "Old age is a massacre." All ThingsConsoled 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'sdynamics--sibling rivalries, miscommunications that spur decades of resentmentall matched by true and genuine love and devotion--and reaches a deepunderstanding of the most unforgettable characters she will ever know, the vividgiants who were her parents.