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Fearlessly candid, often funny and relentlessly real, Ian Brown—feature-writing journalist and author of the award-winning The Boy in the Moon—recounts his daily reckoning with the milestone age of seventy: here are terrifying questions, if not all the answers, that accompany this milestone age
In Seventy, Ian Brown takes us on a brutally honest, darkly humorous journey through the realities of aging. Seventy follows Brown’s candid reflections in Sixty (“charming, thoughtful and edifying company”—The New York Times), in which decade he felt like an adolescent of the elder set. Here, Brown delves into the reflections, struggles, and revelations of a generation facing the profound truth that their remaining years are now more about what they’ve experienced than what lies ahead.
At sixty, Brown felt sure aging was a manageable challenge. A decade later, he is anything but calm and certain. The depredations of the body have continued apace; decay is staging a house party. He has less hair and more cholesterol, less confidence and more fear, and is enveloped in a continuous crisis of being. How much time does he have left? Enough to take on new challenges? Can he still book a ski trip into the remote mountains, and if he does, will he remember to bring his skis? Given that the taking of a selfie in which he doesn’t look demented or furious is rare, is desire still possible—and if it isn’t possible, why does he miss it so much? What has replaced it? Brown is desperate to find aged heroes, examples of men and women who managed to make great work later and later in life, despite their infirmities. What is their secret?
And while getting old—any age after seventy—has its liberations, it also has a newfound gravity: if there is something you want to say or do, you had better say it and do it—now. (Even when that ticking clock quells the urge to do anything.)
“Short-listed for the 2016 RBC Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction
A CBC Best Book of the Year
A Globe and Mail Best Book of 2015
"Mr. Brown is charming, thoughtful and edifying company. There’s loads to identify with in Sixty. More than that: There’s loads to flat-out adore. . . . Brown’s reflections on friendship are soulful and worth committing to heart. So are his meditations on marriage and parenthood.”—The New York Times
“A compelling take on the joys and agonies of growing older. . . . Brown peppers this memoir with crisp, self-deprecating asides, and a wry point of view that holds up to the very end. Where Brown really reels you in is with his sincerity. His insights, quips and candid assessments of aging are to be enjoyed by any Boomer nearing or having passed the big 6-0.”—Los Angeles Times
“A rich new book. . . . Brown can’t help but turn some of the absurdities he faces into humor. . . . The laugh-out-loud passages are tempered by a poignant theme Brown comes back to time and time again: regret.”—Forbes
“Brown asks all the right questions in Sixty, an account that is by turns witty and poignant. I laughed aloud.”—The Wall Street Journal
“A spark of humor shines through even these serious topics, which he handles gracefully. Well considered and illuminating, Sixty allows readers to delve deeply into the real meaning of maturity.”—Booklist
“Brown’s humor is pointed inward as often as outward, and he neither glosses over nor languishes on the fact that he has fewer years ahead of him than behind.”—Kirkus
“Provides readers, baby boomers in particular, with examples of how to live thoughtfully and observantly.”—Library Journal
“Those turning 60 will appreciate and find resonance with Brown’s honest grappling with his aging.”—Publishers Weekly
“I would read anything Ian Brown writes. This is a particular pleasure: Humane, funny, dark, wry, and utterly engrossing.”—Susan Orlean, author of The Orchid Thief
“Finding out Ian Brown has turned sixty is like finding out my bad little brother has turned sixty: I’d expect him to have a disarming, slightly disreputable take on this least interesting of birthdays (long now in my rearview mirror). And with Sixty, I’m certainly not disappointed. Ever the witty, ever the mischievous, observant and likable, Ian Brown has written a book that other sixty-year-olds can keep on their breakfast table, to dip into with their Ovaltine. It’s a splendid companion book to aging—a condition when ordinary companionship is, frankly, not always that agreeable.”—Richard Ford
“I’ve been reading Ian Brown since before I needed reading glasses. He’s wise—poetic even—and willing to be unabashedly petty, which is what makes this book so funny and almost too true.”—Sarah Vowell, New York Times–bestselling author of seven books, most recently Lafayette in the Somewhat United States
“Ian Brown is so wise and insightful and funny about the indignities of turning sixty that he makes those of us who haven’t yet reached that harrowing birthday believe that maybe it won’t be so bad. Surely, once we get there, we’ll all be as wise and insightful and funny as Ian is. We won’t, of course: This book, like its author, is one of a kind. A wonderful, inspiring, occasionally cringe-inducing chronicle of a very human year.”—Paul Tough, author of Helping Children Succeed: What Works and Why
“Growing old has its burdens and pleasures. Ian Brown captures them both so beautifully that he almost makes the reader wish for sixty. There is a lot of wisdom in these pages.”—Ari L. Goldman, author of The Late Starters Orchestra
“Sixty may find [Brown’s] biggest audience yet; there are so many of us in the same creaky boat. Written with [Brown’s] trademark gutsy candour, and full of self-deprecating wit. . . . Edifying . . . accessible.”—Plum Johnson, award-winning author of They Left Us Everything, in the Globe and Mail
“Thoughtful, heartfelt, fearless, impossible to put down. . . . Brown manages to be both hilarious and serious. . . . His ultimate message—to pay attention, to keep our eyes open, to look at ‘what is coming down the road’—is vital.”—Quill & Quire, starred review
