Usually a title like “30 under 30” is a magazine article in a business or chamber of commerce magazine about some high achieving young person recently made assistant vice president for marketing or elected to the city council.
The stories in this collection are by writers over 60 about characters over 60: grown-ups. You might say this is a narrow potential audience: after all, don’t TV shows and retailers want the youth market?
Yes, but this is the reading market and while young people, we are appalled to learn, don’t read fiction, older people do. (And anyway, I have read enough coming-of-age, young adult, first “kiss,” learning-how-the-world-really-is stories for a lifetime.) THESE oldsters are my people.
The twenty stories are of course, varied, but some subjects inevitably prevail: retirement challenges, illness in spite of fidelity to organic vegetables and lots of jogging, loneliness, death, nursing homes, balance problems and broken hips, downsizing and clearing out the house, the difficulties of the inverted power dynamics when the children think they know best. But some are very funny anyway.
The lead story, quirky and comic, tells of Willoughby’s visit to a nursing home where her husband, Gary, and her ex-husband both are residents. Gary has dementia but is still insistently passionate. Later that day, she visits Steven, her ex. He is smoking medicinal marijuana, insists that she partake. She does, they smoke and reminisce and, well, there you are.
Everyone’s favorite is likely to be “Irwin the Crook.” Marge and Irwin, rich and retired in Stamford, Connecticut, and a little bored, steal peppermills from New York’s most expensive restaurants. These are the big ones, brought by the waiter, who asks if he may grind some on your pasta.
They steal from Le Pavillion, The Stork Club, Café des Artistes, thirty of them, some three feet tall, some glass, some silver, some hand-tooled leather. Marge slips them into her Gucci tote. Irwin slips them down his pants. The collection is worth thousands, but of course this behavior has got to stop.
Another story I found darkly comic, but not everyone will, is “The Death of Harold.” At the start, Harold is just a little forgetful, in the regular way: where are his keys, why did he open the refrigerator? The situation gets worse and Harold, who all his life had an avid interest in death and burial, decides on suicide but needs Martha’s help. Harold chooses VSED: Voluntary Stopping Eating and Drinking. A bad choice. Harold becomes grumpy, cheats, and drives Martha crazy, so, finally, she helps him out.
Several are stories in which all the characters are women, sometimes in support groups. No surprise there. To paraphrase Peter, Paul and Mary from years ago: Where have all the husbands gone? Gone to graveyards every one.
