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list price: $10.99
edition:eBook
also available: Paperback
category: Literary Collections
published: Sep 2021
ISBN:9781988298979
publisher: Freehand Books

This Strange Visible Air

Essays on Aging and the Writing Life

by Sharon Butala

tagged: essays, literary, gerontology
Description

A collection of essays on women and aging from Canadian legend Sharon Butala

"What I didn't have a clue about was that I was soon to be old, or what being old would mean to my dreams and desires. While dreading old age with every fibre, I was at the same time in full denial that it would ever happen to me, and so, was shocked down to the soles of my feet when it did."

In this incisive collection, Sharon Butala reflects on the ways her life has changed as she's grown old. She knows that society fails the elderly massively, and so she tackles ageism and loneliness, friendship and companionship. She writes with pointed wit and acerbic humour about dinner parties and health challenges and forgetfulness and complicated family relationships and the pandemic -- and lettuce. And she tells her story with the tremendous skill and beauty of a writer who has masterfully honed her craft over the course of her storied four-decade career.

Butala gives us a book to be cherished -- an elegant and expansive look at the complexities and desires of aging and the aged, standing in stark contrast to the stereotyped, simplistic portrayals of the elderly in our culture. This Strange Visible Air is a true gift.

About the Author
Sharon Butala is an award-winning and bestselling author of both fiction and nonfiction. Her classic book The Perfection of the Morning was a #1 bestseller and a finalist for the Governor General’s Award. Fever, a short story collection, won the 1992 Authors’ Award for Paperback Fiction and was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for best book (Canada and Caribbean region). Her latest novel, Wild Rose, was published in 2015 and has been shortlisted for the W.O. Mitchell Book Prize. Butala is a recipient of the Marian Engel Award, the Saskatchewan Order of Merit, and the 2012 Cheryl and Henry Kloppenburg Award for Literary Excellence. In 2002 she became an Officer of the Order of Canada. A brilliant speaker who is much in demand, she lives in Calgary, Alberta. Visit her at SharonButala.com.
Editorial Reviews

"Sharon Butala understands our never-ending need for control of our lives. She shows us how that need becomes more pressing when we're under attack - and then with characteristic verve she defends us. I love how forthright, personal and thoughtful Butala is in her essays. It's a pleasure to think alongside her. I cheered, argued, learned, admired."

— Connie Gault

"A timely manifesto about old age, which Sharon Butala shows us is far more interesting than is commonly understood. Butala is a talented and original author who writes with lyric grace and a tantalizing touch of mysticism."

— Susan Swan

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