The struggles and lives of two men in a nursing home....their pasts, the present and the future....

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Tracy Kidder is so good at writing oral history kinds of books - telling people's stories in a way that is honest and filled with human strength as well as human frailty.

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From Amazon:

Kidder reveals his extraordinary talent as a storyteller by taking the potentially unpalatable subject of life in a nursing home and making it into a highly readable, engrossing account. Through the eyes of roommates Lou and Joe, we experience daily life in the Linda Manor Nursing Home in Northampton, Massachusetts. Kidder displays an uncanny ability to reveal glimpses of the residents' former lives and their current hopes and fears without becoming sentimental or maudlin. This is a life that we all hope to avoid, both for ourselves and our loved ones; yet when we see it as it is portrayed in Old Friends it becomes less terrifying. This wonderfully different book is an essential purchase.

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Although this is non-fiction based on the author getting to know about the lives of people he met with frequently during the course of a year visitng a nursing home, it reads almost like a novel-characters and situations that are often funny, often sad. An engrossing and very moving book

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