{ "item_title" : "Live a Little", "item_author" : [" Howard Jacobson "], "item_description" : "From the Man Booker Prize-winning author of The Finkler Question and J, and one of our funniest writers alive (Allison Pearson): a wickedly observed novel of old age and new love. At the age of ninety-something, Beryl Dusinbery is forgetting everything--including her own children. Her tongue, meanwhile, remains as sharp as ever. She spends her days stitching macabre messages into her needlework and tormenting her two long-suffering carers with tangled stories of her love affairs. Shimi Carmelli can do up his own buttons, walk without the aid of a frame, and speak without spitting. Among the widows of North London, he's whispered about as the last of the eligible bachelors. Unlike Beryl, he forgets nothing--especially not the shame of a childhood incident that has hung over him ever since. There's very little life remaining for either of them, but perhaps just enough to heal some of the hurt inflicted along the way and find new meaning in what's left. Could this be their chance to live a little? Told with Jacobson's trademark wit and style, Live a Little is equal parts funny, irreverent, and tender--a novel to make you consider all the paths not taken, and whether you could still change course. Advance praise for Live a Little One of the great comic geniuses of our time.--Lit Hub A tender story of unlikely love . . . Jacobson treats with compassion the dilemma of old age. . . . Wise, witty, and deftly crafted.--Kirkus Reviews (starred review)For all of its moments of bleakness, and the occasional flicker of genuine terror, it's rarely less than bitterly funny in its determination to face up to the obliteration that awaits us all.--The Guardian What a relief to come on a novel which invites you to smile and even laugh.--The ScotsmanThe novel's brilliant cover tells it all: hearts and skulls, love and death.--The Jewish ChronicleA thoroughly enjoyable read. For a literature snob and a language obsessive . . . there is a lot to feast on . . . for someone looking for an emotionally honest storyline, the book also delivers. Live a Little is about growing old, but it's also about gender, race, love and politics.--Independent Tender and funny.--Grazia", "item_img_path" : "https://covers4.booksamillion.com/covers/bam/1/98/482/421/198482421X_b.jpg", "price_data" : { "retail_price" : "27.00", "online_price" : "27.00", "our_price" : "27.00", "club_price" : "27.00", "savings_pct" : "0", "savings_amt" : "0.00", "club_savings_pct" : "0", "club_savings_amt" : "0.00", "discount_pct" : "10", "store_price" : "" } }

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Live a Little

Even if they don’t live in a nursing home, the fate of most people past age 90 is to become nearly invisible. That’s what makes Man Booker Prize-winner Howard Jacobson’s decision to cast two Londoners in their 10th decades as the principal characters in his sly new novel, Live a Little, such a bold one.

As she approaches her 100th birthday, Beryl Dusinbery (nicknamed “Princess”) must confront the frustration of living with memories that often resemble a piece of Swiss cheese. When she’s not stitching morbidly humorous needlepoint “death samplers,” she’s doing her best to gather fragments of her colorful, romantic past in a biting journal d’amour.

Shimi Carmelli, former owner of a shop that sold phrenology busts, at times wishes he suffered from Beryl’s frequent memory lapses. Instead, he’s afflicted with perfect recall, and much of what he remembers about his distant childhood, including the brother from whom he’s been estranged for decades, is a source of deep pain. Residing in a flat above the Fing Ho Chinese Banquet Restaurant, where he appears periodically to engage in the practice of cartomancy (fortunetelling with ordinary playing cards), he’s considered the “last of the eligible bachelors,” at least among the elderly widows of North London.

It isn’t until roughly the novel’s midpoint that Beryl and Shimi meet and Jacobson’s talents as an astute student of human nature and his mastery of witty, acid-dipped dialogue shine brightest. Through an almost continuous conversation that begins in a cemetery and proceeds in a Regent’s Park cafe and elsewhere, the secrets concealed by these strikingly different characters gradually see daylight. 

“We meet to touch nerves,” Beryl tells Shimi, who believes they’ve come together at “the perfect age to enjoy a verbal friendship.” And though Beryl believes they’re “both stuck with the parts we learnt to play a long time ago,” the subtle changes we witness in these characters belie that rueful assertion. 

Live a Little’s message—that life isn’t truly over until it ends—is a refreshingly optimistic one for readers of any age.