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Title: As We Are Now: A Novel
ISBN: 0393309576
Author:
May Sarton
Publicate Date: 1992-10
Publish: 1992-10
List Price: $13.95
Average Customer Rating: 4.5
Format: Paperback
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $4.74
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $0.01
Amazon Merchant Price: $11.16
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| Customer Review: |
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1: Agind
May Sarton has given us a very depressing picture of a woman, single, only a brother to take care of her, who is shunted off to an erstwhile nursing facility. She is totally out of her element, and while the ending is a little over the top, can be understood in light of what she tells us about her life and the ending of it. A good read.
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2: Elder Disintegration and Nursing Home Horrors
This is not a new book or a cheerful one. When it was first published, I was not aware of it, nor would I have been interested then, more than thirty years ago when I was in my early forties.
This is a book that should still be read by anyone involved in or concerned about the care and treatment of elders and by any senior citizen who dares to explore what wasting away in an old-style nursing home might have been like for a thoughful, sensitive old woman. We can hope that senior care has improved, but somehow, this little 133-page novel still rings true and stirs understanding and concern.
This fictional journal follows 76-year-old Caroline (Caro) Spencer, who, after a heart attack, is placed in Twin Elms, a small, isolated rural nursing home, by her older brother, who can't care for her. She's a former teacher and rugged individualist. She remembers and admires a non-conformist gay college professor aunt. She dreams about a long-ago lover. She never married.
Her fellow Twin Elms residents are elderly men, mostly demented and hopeless, relegated to a shared charity ward. Caro is happy to have her own room. Her perceived enemy is Harriet, the owner and chief caregiver, who seems to treat her harshly and strive to remove all remaining shreds of dignity, or at least that's how it seems to Caro. "I am in a concentration camp for the old, a place where people dump their parents or relatives exactly as though it were an ash can," she writes two weeks after arriving.
What interests me most in this book are the things that have meaning and the power to relieve Caro's depression, at least temporarily: music, poetry, the rural view from the window and occasional opportunities to venture outside, the cat who isn't allowed in, but sometimes creeps into her bed, and most of all, three people who offer hope and kindness. They are a minister, his college-age daughter, and Anna, Harriet's temporary replacement as a caregiver.
Caroline finds comfort in these things and people, but her most reliable sources of hope are her secret journal and her plan to destroy her "prison." Is she driven to madness? Perhaps, but somehow her ultimate protest makes sense.
We can hope that places like Twin Elms and caregivers like Harriet do not exist, but there are lessons here: the importance of human understanding, kindness, and listening to elders; the need to allow old people pets and their favorite possessions; the importance of personal writing.
This book reminds us of the inevitability of aging and death and the immensity of the caregiving responsibility.
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3: Powerful and timeless
I first read this novel in college for a sociology class. Some 20+ years later, I've just re-read -- and re-discovered -- the power and timelessness of May Sarton's writing.
What I originally thought was a novel about elder abuse and the indignities of old age, I now recognize is a much deeper narrative of love and loss, hope for renewal, and ultimately rage and revenge. It is a short novel, but packed with insights that stay with you for a long time.
Definitely well worth reading.
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4: Powerful
A searing look at the hopelessness of despair, loneliness and old age, May Sarton's As We Are Now is a powerful study of a woman's resolve to relinquish herself by any means possible from the depths of the anger and anguish she feels from her surroundings. Told through the journals of Caro Spencer who has moved into a "home," not due to a lack of mental strength but of a physical frailty that leaves her unable to live alone. She keeps the journals at first as a record of her days as she fears she is losing her memory, but later the journals become a record of the mistreatment that she and the other "inmates" must endure at the hands of the two women who run the home. Told over the course of several months, this is the story of one woman's battle against age and the carelessness that the elderly can be treated with.
It's a powerful book, told quickly and to the point, and there are times that you forget you are reading a novel and feel like you are being given a first-hand account of a woman's battle against her keepers. I found myself feeling hopeless as there should be something that I could do to help ease her suffering, but then I would need to remind myself that this is a novel. One of Sarton's more powerful works.
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5: The Most Dangerous Emotion
This was my first experience with May Sarton, and I was fully impressed with her writing. Her main character, Caroline Spencer, is a heart-breaking gem. I wanted to take her into my home, like Evelyn with Mrs. Threadgoode in Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistlestop Cafe. As We Are Now is written in the form of a journal kept by a woman consigned to a "home" after a heart attack makes her unable to live alone any longer. Initially, she keeps the journal to fight her fear of losing her memory and her mind in what she refers to as a "concentration camp for the old". This is no institution, but a large house run by two women; Miss Spencer is the only female "guest" among a number of mainly somnolent men. From the beginning she cautions herself against hope, "the most dangerous emotion", but nevertheless strives to maintain her sense of self in a terminally dehumanizing situation.
It took some courage to finish the book, because very little good stuff happens, and how it will all end is fairly clear about half way through. But I am very glad I read it, and I think everyone should. We all have aging relatives, and we all will be old one day if we live long enough. An emotionally difficult subject, artfully handled
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