This week, we’re taking a closer look at Powell’s Pick of the Month, A Living Remedy by Nicole Chung.
When the topic of aging and my end-of-life plan comes up (why do my friends keep bringing me up?), I usually resort to dark humored jokes involving
Soylent Green,
Logan’s Run, or some other movie that I’m not actually old enough to remember. This is because I, an elder Millennial, am deeply unsure about what the state of the world will be when I reach a point in my life when my age or other circumstances require me to stop working and/or face a health crisis.
Every stage of my adult life has been characterized by a recession or other economic turmoil, the social safety net is constantly under threat, and climate change will shape the rest of our lives in ways we can predict, and also in many other ways that will be super unpleasant surprises. I almost added a clause “and our children’s lives” in the previous (already overlong) sentence, but that’s kind of the point here: I don’t have children, and that fact – which doesn’t cross my mind, most of the time – made my particular experience reading Nicole Chung’s new memoir especially resonant.
Every stage of my adult life has been characterized by a recession or other economic turmoil, the social safety net is constantly under threat, and climate change will shape the rest of our lives.
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In
A Living Remedy, Chung recounts her experience leaving Oregon to go to college on the East Coast and then staying to start a family. The distance this created between her and her parents – and the fact that neither family could afford regular trips to see the other – weighed on Chung, but when her parents began to face health problems, that distance seemed greater. It seemed like a failure or a betrayal.
I don’t want to get any further without clearly stating the most important fact about
A Living Remedy: it is exquisitely written. Chung isn’t a flashy writer; instead, she is one of consummate skill, rendering complex emotions or observations gracefully and directly. If she were a civil engineer, her buildings and bridges would be so well supported that they could withstand any earthquake. (Let’s add “earthquake” to list of state of the world uncertainties,
thanks a lot, Kathryn Schulz!)
Chung isn’t a flashy writer; instead, she is one of consummate skill, rendering complex emotions or observations gracefully and directly.
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Chung’s talent is not just in the sentence-by-sentence writing, it’s much grander: her books are empathy machines (her previous book,
All You Can Ever Know, is a favorite of mine). She is able to express her feelings and understand and convey the motivations and emotional states of every participant. To a point, at least. Much of the book is about coming to terms with the balance of obligations that parenthood demands, and that includes when and why information is withheld.
Chung is caught in the classic sandwich-generation dilemma: how to balance raising her children while helping her aging parents as best she can. I will never bear that exact burden, but I’ve never understood it more viscerally. I’m far more likely to find myself in her parents’ position: distant from most relatives and facing an uncertain future. It is Chung’s highest achievement with this book, I think, that it presents a loving but clear-eyed portrait of her parents and thereby offers a way forward: with grace and love.