Customer Reviews

The Leisure Seeker LP: A Novel

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

5.0 out of 5 stars Whopee on the road!, May 18, 2009

By Susan L. Anderson "Sunny Susan in AZ" (Tempe, AZ USA) - See all my reviews

(REAL NAME)

As a motorhome traveler I can surely relate to many things in this

book.

This is a very funny book, in some ways a sad book, and it is also a beautiful love story!

The author is surely right on in his descriptions of aging and how things change.

I enjoyed this very much and recommend it to all of the age 40+ crowd.

This is a wonderfully touching story. It was my book club's selection for the month. The author did an excellent job narrating a strong, courageous and loving 80+ year old woman. She wasn't a CEO, a politician, a movie star, but an ordinary Detroit housewife and mother who defies doctors and adult children to take one more cross-country trip with her husband on Route 66. It's sad, funny and romantic all at the same time. A great read from beginning to end.

Zadoorian's novel packs a punch. It forces the reader to face the question of his or her own mortality. What's life all about? Is there any rhyme or reason for any particular life? Can we take charge of our own dying? These are big questions. This novel doesn't give the answers, but it poses the questions. It is a moving story of love and courage. The reader is drawn in and wants a happy ending that is only an ending. "The Leisure Seeker" is a name for a brand of motor homes. Zadoorian inplies that we are all seekers on the journey of life.

I'll be brief since others have written out the story itself.

Don't miss this chance to read a tender and sweet story about two folks who have spent many years together. You'll feel like you know them before you get to reading too far into the book.

Do yourself a favor and read this one.

You won't be sorry you did

What a weird and wonderful book.

First of all, Zadoorian, although his name is Michael, must be a very wise,

old woman. As you can see from the book description, this is the story of

an old couple who escape all of the preconceptions of how they should live

their short, remaining time on this earth. It is written in the voice of

Ella, who you just have to describe as spunky.

She has cancer and in spite of it (or actually because of it),

she decides that she and her husband John, who has alzheimer's, will,

against the recommendations/advice/admonishments/threats and pleas of

their children and doctors, take their beloved Leisure Seeker RV on the

road one last time to retrace a previous journey over what is left of

Route 66.

So it's a road trip for octogenarians.

Which means all of the associated dramas and circumstances of aging

(humorous and sad) come along for the ride.

And that's why I say that Michael Zadoorian must be a wise old lady.

Writing in the voice of Ella, he gives us all of the wisdom, the humorous

and bittersweet insights of people who have lived a full life and now,

facing death, take the time to contemplate that life and savor it as it is

coming to an end.

But be aware, this is not some depressing book filled with nothing but

complaints about aging and sadness about the good old days being gone.

It is funny, bittersweet, tense and hysterical. Things happen! This

is a story that moves along and, like any good book, you keep wanting

to get back to it to see what will happen next. Very importantly,

there are no false dramas used to move things along. There are no

trumped up dark family secrets so often used to create fake tension.

The beauty of this story is the normal-ness. These are plain people

who are interesting just because we can identify so much with their

insights and lives. Their choice is actually to continue to be as

normal as they can be: to not be crammed into all of these last minute

definitions of "patient", "cancer sufferer", "old person" and the rest

of it, and try to do something that for them is quite normal: get in

the RV and take a vacation from all of that!

Best of all, at the end of the day, you love these people.

You come to wish that you could have the chance to be one of the

people they meet along the way.

Zadoorian gives you that wonderful chance.

I read a review of this book in our newspaper and immediately ordered it. It was so good. I think those of us who are over the age of 50 especially would enjoy this book. It is written by a man but one would sure think that it was written by an elderly lady. He has the senior world pegged so well. I never want to read books again, but this one I could and I can't wait to see it turned into a movie.

While there were positive aspects of this book, overall I found it to be a very grim and unpleasant read. There are only two developed characters in this book, Ella and John-- everyone else is described only briefly as a flat, two-dimensional source of annoyance or concern for them. Ella and John are in their 80s; John has dementia and Ella is dying of metastasized cancer. Fleeing unwanted end-of-life medical intervention, Ella takes off on a final cross-country RV trip with John, determined to die on her own terms.

I found some passages touching-- a brief interaction with a stranger at an old Stuckey's, for example. I also felt that the portrayal of John's confusion and frustration over his memory loss was well written. The unexpected moments when he treats Ella with tenderness, when he is for a moment the husband she has lost, are moving. But overall, those passages couldn't counterbalance the negatives for me.

Worst, I personally have never met an 85 year old married couple who continually snarl such ugly things at each other (who has??). This kind of hurtful language is portrayed as normal for John and Ella-- apparently I am in the minority, but this is not my idea of a loving couple. (The words they hurl at each other as they drive across the country are so ugly that Amazon actually removed the example I included in my review-- I've never seen that happen before.) Readers who would never dream of treating their loved ones this way will most likely feel it's not much fun to read about.

Second, from the beginning of the novel it struck me powerfully that the narrator sounds absolutely nothing like an elderly woman-- instead, she sounds like a 50 year old man. I think the author would have been better advised to choose a male narrator; in my opinion, he just wasn't able to create a convincing woman's voice. There are some very well-turned phrases scattered through the narration, but the reader ends up feeling that they are the author's voice and his thoughts, not Ella's. As a result, Ella does not feel like a real person; the only consistent aspects of her personality are frustration with her husband's memory loss and fear of her own pain and debility.

Recently I read another book about elderly characters who are even more debilitated than Ella and John (they live in a nursing home and are unable to care for themselves). That book, The Sweet By and By: A Novel, was an incredibly honest and sometimes scary account of very old age, yet it still managed to be a really enjoyable read with endearing and realistic characters. Unfortunately I just didn't feel the same about The Leisure Seeker.