By Elizabeth Hay | McClelland & Stewart
Every family approaches a time of reckoning, when parents near the end of life and their children must grapple with the inevitable, messy challenges of role reversal, caregiving, and mortality. In All Things Consoled, Scotiabank Giller Prize-winning author Elizabeth Hay offers a poignant personal account of the complex dynamics and emotions that can ensue. Assuming the role of primary caregiver to her father and mother, Gordon and Jean, Lizzie “the so-called difficult child” bares witness as they lose their independence, and Jean sinks into dementia. Despair, love, resentment, insecurity, sibling rivalries, old grievances, family tensions and grace are laid bare as she comes to terms with that family caring. All Things Consoledwon the 2018 Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Award for Nonfiction.
