Book Review: My Father's Keeper

My Father's Keeper
by Jonathan G. Silin
Beacon, $23.95

"The year I turned fifty I finally understood that my parents were dying. Not all at once, but slowly, by degrees." So begins Silin's portrait — subtitled "The Story of a Gay Son and His Aging Parents" — of his family's long and bitter slide into the land of the frail elderly, where "there is no cure and will be no cure for the multiple impacts of age." His father, a lifelong depressive rendered progressively speechless, demented, and half-blind over the course of the book, loathes his increasing dependency on his son, and Silin maintains his extraordinary compassion even as he finds himself the target of accusations and tantrums: "Both the past and the present are territories that my father no longer travels to. He judges me, and other caregivers, by what we can do for him. ... [I am] disappointed that he does not recognize my own efforts on his behalf, but he has nothing left to give." Silin achieves a rare balance between clarity and immediacy, universality and specificity, and this is a supreme work, a searingly precise investigation into the times when ambivalence must coexist with love. Timid readers might prefer Tuesdays with Morrie.

— Philip Huang

http://www.eastbayexpress.com/2006-06-28/culture/dementia-and-haiku/full