We Spread

I read this enormously engaging foray into aging, truth, and memory that completely defies characterization in the course of an afternoon. Penny has lived for decades in the same apartment with her partner, who is now deceased. Both artists, he was the one with the career, she just paints. While aging is a struggle, Penny has a series of serious incidents: she fears she is being observed, thinks she hears someone else in the apartment, then has a fall that could have been fatal. Her superintendent intercedes and she’s moved to an assisted-living home in the country; supposedly, her partner arranged this before his demise. Initially skeptical, Penny comes to love the home, which houses just three other occupants and two staff members—the leader of whom seems to use an experimental method of care. Penny starts painting again, eats well, and makes a friend. But slowly she grows suspicious, and as time becomes more fluid than linear, and what seems like weeks could be years, she fears that she and the other residents are being hurt in some way. Or is she suffering from dementia, with reality and the imagination alternating to create some other state of being? By the author of the cult classic I’m Thinking of Ending Things, this book looks squarely at a future many of us will experience but that we seldom discuss. A great choice for book groups—readers will want to hear and discuss other reactions