The Golden Years
A new novella from the peerless A. G. Mojtabai tackles an underrepresented group: those who are growing old.
Review by John Wilson
For years now, starting well before I became officially “old” myself (I’ll turn 77 in June; my wife, Wendy, turned 77 in February), I’ve deplored the paucity of current fiction that prominently features “old people” both in their great variety and in their shared experience. A sterling exception is A. G. Mojtabai, whose novella Featherless, published by Slant in December, is one of the best such books I’ve read in my lifetime.
Three caveats before we zero in on the book and Mojtabai’s remarkable “anti-career,” as I have described it. First, I am not urging you to check out Featherless in order to accrue virtue for reading about an “under-represented” group: the “seniors” (loathsome word), the elderly, the senile, etc. Of course this “group” is indeed absurdly under-represented at a time when a large proportion of newly published fiction derives its raison d’être from its claim to tell stories about various groups whose stories are said to have been ignored, repressed, untold. And it is a “group” that crosses all the familiar lines—racial, sexual, and otherwise. But most fiction written under that sign, like most fiction that makes any such prefabricated appeal, is tedious stuff.
Second, as a firm believer in the irreducibility of taste, I have no desire to grab you by the collar and say, “You must read this!” (even if such an imperious command had any chance of success). The airways are already crowded with people (some of them my good friends, others whom I’ve never met but hold in respect and affection, and so on) who prescribe a steady diet of Great Books for you: Jane Austen for breakfast, Flannery O’Connor for lunch, and who’s coming to dinner?
Third, part of the charm of Featherless is precisely the fact that it has nothing to sell you. I don’t mean that it is a trivial book—far from it—but rather that it is self-effacing in a manner that it is characteristic of the author. Many of her fictions are short; several have one-word titles. A book in a sort of no-man’s land between fiction and nonfiction, Soon (1998), set in the realm of hospice care (Mojtabai served as a volunteer), is thematically related to Featherless. And her most recent book, the novella Thirst, is also closely related to Featherless while quite different in tone. If you don’t like Mojtabai, you may say that her approach to the reader is too detached; if you like (love) her, as I do, you relish her serene assurance, without a trace of arrogance. In the acknowledgements at the end of Featherless, Mojtabai writes, “First and foremost, I want to thank my daughter Chitra F. Mojtabai for her collaboration on every page of this manuscript. Without her, Featherless would never have taken flight. She bled over each word as much as I did. This book is half hers.”
It is a marvel that Mojtabai brings this off with no sense of rush, nothing forced.
The next paragraph of the acknowledgments is essential too: “To the wise and kind women who have been my caregivers, I have learned so much from you. Thank you for your attention and friendship, your patience and compassion. Here’s to my Texas Toughies: Lisa Tucek, Pandora Box, Kimberly ‘Kiki’ Grantham, Tammie Whitley, and Anna Ortiz.” I’m not sure I have ever quoted from the acknowledgments in writing about a work of fiction; here, to do so is essential, to give you a sense of the spirit of the book, the spirit of the author.
So. The setting of Featherless is the Residence at Shady Rest, Home for the Aged. That pretentious name (“the Residence at…”) is pitch-perfect, like everything else in this book. Almost all of the narrative covers part of a single year. This is followed by two “mini-chapters” (and I mean “mini”), the first set a year later (a “mysterious new flu”—Covid, of course—has arrived, and residents and staff are dying), the second, a year after that. The narrative is very episodic, now zeroing in on one of the residents, now on another; the central consciousness, insofar as there is one, is a young man named Daniel, who has started to work at Shady Rest not long before the beginning of the action. The residents—Gladys, Elora, Eli, Wiktor, and so on—are a varied bunch; we get a sense of each one as a person in quick descriptions, a bit of conversation, brief third-person glimpses of their thoughts. All this is done very economically, with more extended takes of Daniel. It is a marvel that Mojtabai brings this off with no sense of rush, nothing forced.
There is a sharp downward trajectory for some of the residents while others are muddling along, the end not yet looming. Eli is tormented by the thought that he will soon be transferred to the “Memory Care Unit,” where residents in the full grip of senility are sequestered; that becomes one of the major “plot-lines” of the novel. As a caregiver myself, this rang all too true to me. Also resonating with my reading of Featherless were memories—some very sharp—of the eight years during which my wife, Wendy, was a hospice volunteer. I think many readers would have similar experiences with this book, since so many of us have encountered—in one way or another—the bedrock reality it illuminates. Many thanks to Greg Wolfe and Slant Books, and above all to A. G. Mojtabai.
John Wilson was the editor of Books & Culture from its first issue (Sept/Oct 1995) to its last (Nov/Dec 2016). Nowadays he writes an (online) column every other week for First Things, a monthly fiction column for Prufrock News, and reviews for a wide range of publications.
Featherless was published by Slant Books on November 26, 2024. Fare Forward appreciates their provision of a review copy. You can purchase your own copy from the publisher here.
