Bettyville: A Memoir

"Last year’s literary tour de force about the trials of tending to aged parents was Roz Chast’s Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?; This year’s must-read dispatch from the frontlines of caretaking is George Hodgman’s Bettyville. A few years ago, Hodgman, who had enjoyed a highflying publishing career, lost his job and returned to his childhood home in Paris, Mo., to care for his 90-year-old mother, Betty. The kicker is that Betty has never acknowledged that her only son is gay. Bettyville powerfully chronicles the exhaustion and absurdity of eldercare, as well as the psychic cost of maintaining a familial relationship that demands silence."