Still Life at Eighty, by Abigail Thomas, is a precious jewel of short essays, very similar to journal entries. Thomas writes as one rapidly approaching her eightieth birthday. She brings wry humor, brutal honesty and reflections on a life well-lived without pretense or perfection. She describes her life as she lives it, quietly sitting and observing the world outside her window, the company of her beloved dogs, the loss of people in her life, her struggle to continue living and writing and appreciating life. She spares nothing, sharing her fears and dreads. Her writing envelopes the reader...suddenly you are sitting with her, seeing what she sees and hoping you can pet the dog. Highly recommend as 5 Star read. Thank you to NetGalley and Scribner Books for the opportunity to read a digital ARC. It was a rare gift.

Abigail Thomas, “The New York Times” bestselling author of “A Three Dog Life: A Memoir,” gifts (hint hint) the reading world with a new memoir this season, “Still Life at Eighty: The Next Interesting Thing” (Scribner, 2024).

Divided into four sections, including Being This Old, Stay-at-Home Order, Wisteria, and A Few Thoughts About Writing, “Still Life at Eighty” is practically a writing guide in disguise. Thomas covers almost a dozen mini classes, such as one of her favorite writing lessons and the first line of a manuscript she still cannot forget. However, true to her pithy writing style, she doesn’t milk extra pages (or your time) to wax on about the experience.

Her introductory essay, “When It Struck Me,” includes a line that exemplifies the aging experience for many—probably the spirit of the entire book, too: “I don’t feel elderly. I feel like myself, only more so.” Woven throughout Being This Old are the physical challenges of approaching eighty interspersed with the accumulated patience and caring less about what other people think that older age grants.

This book might appeal to readers of Amy Ephron (or Nora Ephron), Margaret Renkl, Anne Lamott, and Anna Quindlen.

Thank you kindly to Abigail Thomas, Scribner, and NetGalley for the eARC.

The book is wonderful in many aspects. You can't help but admire author's outlook on ageing, her ability to find something compelling in mundane, and her willingness to watch out for the next interesting thing. Her humorous writing style is inventive and stimulating. The structure of the book, short essays that don't need to be read at once or in order, is suitable for both busy people and those with short attention span. The book shouldn't be considered only for older audience. This book is a wonderful gift for younger people as well. They don't know it yet, but they probably will find it quite useful when the time comes that they will benefit from the wisdom Abigail Thomas shares so entertainingly in her book. And it may be sooner than expected. This book is not only for reading but for re-reading.

The book is full of pithy observations on being an Elder, for instance,

… all of us [the elderly] lumped together with lots of discounts and
no identities …

If you are not old enough to remember where you were when John Kennedy was assassinated, this book probably won’t resonate with you as strongly as it will with people whose memories can return to the 1960s in a nanosecond.

The first half of the book seemed optimistic and with well-written funny thoughts on a variety of subjects with the occasional laugh-out loud observation. At about the halfway mark, the book turned somber when Thomas began writing about the things no one wants to talk about regarding being 80 years old - things like the sudden and persistent feelings of dread and unnamed fears and the loss of memory, not just of things like phone numbers and people’s names, but she also talks about the fear that sometimes prevent the elderly from having joy in their lives and negatively affects their feeling safe and, in some cases, sane.

If you’ve ever wondered - and you should have - what your parents and/or grandparents really feel about becoming eighty, read this book. You’ll learn a great deal and that knowledge may help you honor the elders in your life more than you do now.

My thanks to NetGalley and Scribner for an eArc.

Yes, there is still life at eighty! I really loved this little gem of a memoir by Abigail Thomas. So much wit, spice and positivity although I do share her strong feelings on '45'. I think I would like to grow old like this woman and her dogs. So many snippets of humor and joy. Highly recommended.
Many thanks to Net Galley and Scribner Publishing for a chance to read an ARC version of this delightful, thoughtful memoir. 5 solid stars.

Thanks to NetGalley and Scribner for the ARC!

In "Still Life at Eighty," Abigail Thomas gathers her accumulating years and outgrown epiphanies to make a simple point—there’s very little distance between contentment & ambivalence; there are no borders between stillness & stagnation.

This is a book with nowhere to go, but only because Thomas herself is largely homebound. Life is full of tradeoffs, and the author’s lack of mobility might inhibit expansive thought, but it allows her to fully inhabit little moments of reflection. Sometimes she is bored. Sometimes that boredom feels meaningful to her. As the world grows smaller, she is better able to be present with it.

Readers’ enjoyment will depend on whether they are able to be just as present with Thomas.

Personally, I find "Still Life" to be a book that encourages patience without often rewarding it. Much of the book finds Thomas marinating more than ruminating—simply sitting in a thought without interrogating it. The memoir is built around dozens of brief anecdotes, many of which are contained to only a truncated paragraph or two. Sometimes this brevity feels really effective, such as in “Have I Told You This Before?”, where Thomas concludes that a fading memory allows someone to experience “something we love over and over again for the first time.” At other times, however, it simply feels like wheel-spinning, especially in the mid-pandemic section of the book. Perhaps I should be more gracious, but I am tired of authors asking us to return to the cocktail of fear and boredom that defined the early 2020s without offering substance in return. None of us had a good time, and I think the subject matter lends itself to insularity with the appearance of interiority.

That said, I really loved the final section—“A Few Thoughts About Writing”—because it’s where Thomas seems most keen on sharing her lifetime of wisdom with the succinctness that serves her poorly elsewhere. In particular, “Motive for Memoir” is a precise summary of how someone should write: “Memoir should not be self-serving, even accidentally. If you come out as anything but profoundly human, you’ve probably got the wrong motives for doing this, or you haven’t stood far enough back, or come close enough.” When Thomas praises vulnerability, it carries an extra weight because it’s coming from decades of choosing to be vulnerable.

Ultimately, "Still Life at Eighty" is a warm collage of a full life, and one that may alleviate the fears of those who see age as a threat. Abigail Thomas is truthful about the difficulty of incontinence and brittled bones, but she suggests that they can create room for something softer and gentler, as she writes near the end:

“At eighty, you don’t expect to learn something new, at least not every day. However, I am learning something new every day. Granted, it’s the same thing, but I learn it over and over with the same startled awareness.”

Many thanks to NetGalley for this advance copy of “Still Life at Eighty” by Abigail Thomas.
The pandemic was a difficult time for many widows, too much time alone and a trying time to become a first-time grandmother. After one of my church acquaintances admitted that she dreamed of driving to New York and walking in traffic, all of us threw her a drive-by grandmother-to-be shower.
Wearing a mask, I gave her my present in person later. I was recovering from a ten-hour open-heart surgery and didn’t want to take any chances of getting Covid. After three months, I went out for coffee. At the end of the week, everyone was ordered to stay inside and to isolate for a while. In-person church services were stopped temporarily, and then, we could only attend services through zoom. I’m sure it was particularly difficult for people who lived alone.
Abigail Thomas vividly describes this period of living by herself during Covid as she approached her eightieth birthday.
The best part of the book is part four where she switches gears and describes some of the basics she teaches in her writing classes: for example, how to choose writing fiction or non-fiction to express one’s subject matter. She gives an idea for how she gets her students’ creative juices flowing; “Write two pages that begin with the sentence: ‘This is a lie I’ve told before.’”
She says about writing memoir, “If you end up where you started - that is, if you wind up with the same feeling about yourself and your life that you had going into this - well, you may not have looked hard enough.”
Finally, she remarks, “Writing memoir is one way to explore how you became the person you are. It’s the story of how you got here from there. Believe me, it’s a good story.”
Indeed. She’s written one with an instructive ending.

In her eighty years, Abigail Thomas captures the beauty of life's ordinary moments with lyrical, almost poetic, prose that transforms the mundane into something remarkable. Amid the loneliness of the pandemic, she reflects on aging, memory, and the companionship of her beloved dogs, infusing each chapter with wisdom and wit. Within the pages, Thomas offers advice that makes the craft of writing feel accessible and deeply rewarding., which is something that my students will appreciate.

Excellent insights and craft by Abigail Thomas.
Just what I look for in books; wonderful prose and amazing content complementing each other.

In her eighty years of life, author Abigail Thomas recognizes that life is composed of moments. With a turn of a phrase, or a simple string of words, she makes ordinary moments become downright beautiful. The lyrical rhythm of her writing approaches poetry, grammatically perfect, humorous, and unexpected. Each chapter holds another topic of random wise thoughts, some as brief as a single Kindle page. Her love of life springs from her belief that something interesting can happen at any moment. She faces her fears head on, though, hoping that her own death will be nothing more than flowing out an open window and then evaporating into mist. What a lovely thought!

It’s the pandemic, and she’s lonely. The days are shapeless and indistinguishable from one another. She walks with a cane, and can’t see so well, but still drives short distances during the day. She is aware of her fading memory, but can’t quite place what she can’t recall. Thomas cherishes the companionship of her beloved dogs, and even welcomes bugs and insects to her home. She wonders if ants ever get lonely.

As a teacher of writing, the author gives tips on how to hone the craft. Writing is her lifeline. She takes her own advice, making the effort to write sound easy and approachable and worthwhile. This reader is a full decade younger than the author. I can only hope that I approach my eightieth year with as much grace and understanding. Highly recommended for gifting and savoring.

With thanks to NetGalley and the author for a free advance e-copy of this book, I have written this review voluntarily. (Publication date is November 19, 2024.)

Wow, wow, wow! This book was far too short. I’d like to pull up a chair next to Abigail Thomas and her dogs and listen to her stories, or simply watch ants crawl across the table with her, forever. I’m 37, but found tremendous comfort in the wisdom of a woman more than twice my age. The idea that one day you really do stop caring—about how you look, about what other people think, even about the news—let me relax a little, even as I felt keenly the dread that still sometimes keeps her up at night and the social anxiety that kept her housebound during COVID. Mostly I love that, at eighty, she teaches twice-weekly writing workshops, despises “chronology” in memoir, and got a tattoo of FTS (F*ck This Sh*t) to celebrate becoming an octogenarian. Pure magic.

Thanks to the publisher for an ARC!

I cannot say enough about how much I loved this book. I'm still over thirty years from eighty, but reading Thomas' book gave me hope that there is much to celebrate and still more to learn in the coming decades, plus humor and insight and beauty no matter how limited my life becomes. The writing is SO good, but that's to be expected. It was so much more than just beautiful writing. This book made me look at all the little details around me, searching for what they have to teach me. It made me reconsider stink bugs as noble instead of annoying. It made me tear up and it made me laugh. It made me want to be a better writer, and to work harder at being authentic and vulnerable and open to where the words take me. What a gift! I can't wait to share it with the people in my life-- especially other writers and my 80+ year old family members who I know will love it too.

Still Life At Eighty is so beautifully written Abigail Thomas draws us into her world her reality as she nears eighty.She shares memories of younger years brings us into her daily existence. A read that at times made me sad at other times made me laugh .a book to treasure and share.#netgalley #scribner

I cannot begin to explain how beautiful this title was to me. As a woman of a certain age, I'll be gifting it to my friends "of a certain age: as well. It was poignant and bittersweet, but at times I laughed with chagrin. Thomas is a gem and "sees" us as we are!