A Place Called Canterbury - by Dudley Clendinen (Paperback)

About the Book

Clendinen has written a deeply moving, often hilarious look at how the oldestAmericans are coping with the reality of living longer.

Book Synopsis

An "affectionate, touchingly empathetic" (Janet Maslin, The New York Times) look at old age in America today Welcome to Canterbury Tower, an apartment building in Florida, where the residents are busy with friendships, love, sex, money, and gossip-and the average age is eightysix. Journalist Dudley Clendinen's mother moved to Canterbury in 1994, planning-like most the inhabitants-to spend her final years there. But life was not over yet for the feisty southern matron. There, she and her eccentric new friends lived out a soap opera of dignity, nerve, and humor otherwise known as the New Old Age. A Place Called Canterbury is both a journalist's account of the last years of the Greatest Generation and a son's rueful memoir of his mother. Entertaining and unsparing, it is essential reading for anyone with aging parents, and those wondering what their own old age might look like.

Review Quotes

" One of the most enjoyable and important books to cross our desks this year. Beautifully written . . . moving and humorous. Invaluable for anyone grappling with the challenges and opportunities in later life."
-The Wall Street Journal

"A book that stands apart from so much of what is being written about aging in this country."
-The Baltimore Sun