ELIZABETH HAY is the author of the #1 bestseller Late Nights on Air (2008), which won the Scotiabank Giller Prize. Her other works include Alone in the Classroom (2012) and His Whole Life (2015). In 2002, she received the prestigious Marian Engel Award, and for All Things Consoled she was the winner of the 2018 Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Award for Non-fiction. She lives in Ottawa, Canada.
This book is likely to break your heart, and it will definitely make you think about your own family in the context of ageing. - Quill and Quire. As a novel, this book would have been heartbreaking. But, being a memoir, it is 10 times more powerful. Those of us who have lived through similar experiences with ageing, ailing parents can discern the truth to Hay's book. - Artsfile Hay has written about it all, with care and candour, in a remarkable memoir - Maclean's Elizabeth Hay is a marvel. She honours her parents in this portrait of their final years. As steadfast a daughter as she is a writer, Hay writes with sometimes scalding authenticity about aging and the challenges that come with the end of a life, but she is never less than tender. I loved this moving memoir Piercingly candid and exquisitely written, Elizabeth Hay's memoir describes the intensity of the love, uncertainty and exasperation triggered by her parents' dying. Yet there is humour here, too, even - especially - after the final goodbyes In All Things Consoled, Hay chronicles with breath-taking honesty the ravages of age and decline. She also shows how love, beauty and the sustenance of writing are a kind of balm for this reality of the human experience - C.B.C. Books Poignant, poetic and sharply observed - Winnipeg Free Press Luminous and moving. - Times Literary Supplement.