Live a Little

July 29, 2019
Booker-winner Jacobson’s latest is a deliciously entertaining, rollicking dark comedy about nonagenarians searching for meaning while confronting their deepest fears. Beryl Dusinbery has survived countless marriages and torrid love affairs yet finds herself terrified of forgetting words and being rendered incommunicative. She spends her days making elaborate needlework designs of “death samplers,” with morbid phrases (“he was born without fuss and died without fuss, slipping out of life like an oystery down an open throat. ‘That wasn’t so difficult,’ he said, and expired. No one was listening.”) while giving her caregivers a hard time. Shimi Carmelli is a 91-year-old diviner whose clients are a circle of wealthy London widows who consider him to be an eligible bachelor: he walks without an apparatus and can still dress himself. Shimi’s problem is that he suffers from an excellent memory and can’t forget anything. He remains haunted by his childhood experiment trying on his mother’s underwear and feels permanently tainted. Beryl and Shimi meet after the funeral of his brother, Ephraim, and strike up an unlikely relationship with the deceased Ephraim as their mutual connection. Together they discover a new way to live by confiding past experiences, and Shimi is shocked by how easily they can trust each other. Jacobson’s appealing tale will delight readers.

Allan Corduner superbly narrates this wryly humorous and deftly observed audiobook featuring two 90-something characters, Beryl and Shimi. Beryl is a challenging woman with a domineering and abrasive manner; she refers to her caregivers as Euphoria and Nastya. Corduner succeeds in depicting all the facets of her complex character, including her severe memory lapses. The gentle Shimi is portrayed in a self-effacing tone that shades his deep shame over a childhood incident. Employing authentic-sounding Eastern European and African accents, Corduner also infuses the caregivers with lively spirits tempered by a strong measure of fortitude. The story requires some patience as Beryl and Shimi don't meet until halfway through the audiobook, but the wait is well rewarded by their late-in-life special friendship. M.J. � AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine