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开 本: 16开纸 张: 胶版纸包 装: 精装是否套装: 否国际标准书号ISBN: 9781400067954
Florida, takes a spill. At the hospital, Addie bolts upright on her
gurney and yells “I demand an autopsy!” before passing out
cold.
“One minute, she is unconscious, the next, she’s nuts,” observes
Meg Federico in this hilarious and poignant memoir of taking care
of eighty-year-old Addie and her relatively new (and equally old)
husband, Walter, in their not-so-golden years.
Addie’s accident is a portent of things to come over the next two
years as Meg oversees her mother’s home care in the Departure
Lounge, the nickname Meg gives Addie and Walter’s house in suburban
New Jersey. It is a place of odd behaviors and clashing caregivers,
where chaos and confusion reign supreme.
Meg had expected that Addie and Walter would settle into a
Rockwellian dotage of docile dependency. Instead the pair regress
into terrible teens. Meg watches from the sidelines in disbelief as
her mother and stepfather, forbidden by doctors to drink, conspire
to order cases of scotch by phone; as Addie’s attendant accuses the
evening staff of midnight voodoo; as the increasingly demented
Walter’s sex drive becomes unbridled and mail-order sex aids are
delivered to the front door. Meg jumps in to cope with the
pandemonium–even as she struggles to manage her own family back in
Nova Scotia.
With a fresh voice and a keen eye for the absurd, Meg Federico
writes a story that will resonate with the generation now caring
for their parents. Welcome to the Departure Lounge is a
moving and madcap chronicle of a family–their moments of joy, the
memories they’d rather forget, and the just plain loopiness of
their situation. “How’s life at the Departure Lounge?” Meg’s
brother asks. Meg doesn’t know where to start. “Let’s just say the
drinks are outrageous, and they never run out of nuts.”
“Meg Federico has written a deeply moving, hilarious, and
unforgettable manifesto on mothering her mother, as Addie takes
center stage in the finale of her life. Book clubs will rally
around this one–for the laughs, for the sheer honesty, and for the
lively discussions that will ensue. Federico has woven the details
of her experience, sometimes tragic and always transcendent, into a
memoir you will not be able to put down. This is a mother-daughter
love story, with an ending that sparkles like the finest
diamond.”
–Adriana Trigiani, bestselling author of the Big Stone
Gap series and Very Valentine
“Dealing with her aging mother and stepfather is not fun, but in
Federico’s deft hands, it’s poignant, terrifying, and very
funny.”
–Phyllis Theroux, author of California and Other States of
Grace
“[A] frank account, by turns sad and terribly funny . . . Federico
gently delineates the humiliating burden caused by the loss of
memory, while humanely portraying a brave new sympathy and
understanding between her mother and herself.”
–Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“What Meg Federico thinks of as her parents’ spiraling out of
control is sort of normal behavior in the South. That’s why I loved
this book so much–it’s wise and hilarious, and, no matter where you
live, you’ll get something out of it, especially if you have aged
parents.”
–Gayden Metcalfe, co-author of Being Dead Is No
Excuse
“Federico, who has the eye of a sitcom writer, views her mother
with a mixture of love, humor, sympathy and exasperation. . . . A
funny yet touching portrayal of the indignities of aging.”
–Kirkus Reviews
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