Can't We Talk about Something More Pleasant?
Roz Chast
An honest, sad book about the deaths of the author’s parents that also made me laugh out loud at times. I was never a big fan of Roz Chast’s cartoons in the New Yorker, but Elise read this book and strongly recommended it. The portrait of her parents is so (at times brutally) honest that you know the tender parts are authentic, and the same can be said of the self-portrait. Chast does not pull any punches, and talks about aspects of the process that people are very loath to talk about–her feelings of resentment and concern about money, among other things–without being overly “confessional” or self-indulgent.