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    Old Friends
    Old Friends
    Old Friends
    Audiobook9 hours

    Old Friends

    Written by Tracy Kidder

    Narrated by Lowell George Seibel

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    A Pulitzer Prize–winning author’s “touching, funny and inspiring” true story of daily life in a New England nursing home (The New York Times).

    Ninety-year-old Lou quit school after the eighth grade, worked for the rest of his life, and stayed with the same woman for nearly seventy years. Seventy-two-year-old Joe was chief probation officer in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, holds a law degree, and has faced the death of a son and the raising of a mentally challenged daughter. Now, the two men are roommates in a nursing home. Despite coming from very different backgrounds, the two become close friends.

    Focusing on these two men as well as introducing us to the other aging residents of Linda Manor in Northampton, Massachusetts, literary journalist Tracy Kidder examines the sorrows and joys of growing older and the universal struggle to find meaning in the face of mortality. From the New York Times–bestselling author and National Book Award–winning author of The Soul of a New Machine, this is an extraordinary look inside an often-hidden world.

    “As in his Pulitzer Prize-winning The Soul of a New Machine, House, and the best-selling Among Schoolchildren, 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.” —Library Journal

    “Rich detail and true-to-the-ear dialogue let the brave and determined elderly speak for themselves—and for the continually surprising potential of the human spirit.” —Kirkus Reviews

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    Release dateAug 25, 2008
    ISBN9781423358138
    Author

    Tracy Kidder

    Tracy Kidder graduated from Harvard, studied at the University of Iowa, and served as an army officer in Vietnam. He has won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the Robert F. Kennedy Award, and many other literary prizes, and is the author of eight books.

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    Reviews for Old Friends

    4/5

    63 ratings8 reviews

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    • 5/5
      I never tire of Tracy Kidder’s writing. I’ve read most of his books, including the Pulitzer Prize winner Soul of a New Machine. This book, Old Friends, is written in Kidder’s typical fly on the wall style. It’s about the residents at Linda Manor nursing home. We spend time with a variety of patients, from the quaint to the bizarre. Some of the relationships are touching, especially the one between Joe and Lou, two unlikely friends from two different generations. Many of the stories are heart wrenching and almost too difficult to finish. Being in my late 60s, I probably shouldn’t be reading books about life inside nursing homes, but I can’t resist Tracy Kidder. This book, like all his others, is a gem.
    • 4/5
      This is a sort of year-long documentary about the residents and staff of a Massachusetts nursing home, primarily two men (Joe in his 70s and Lou in his 90s) who grow from being irritated with one another when placed as roommates, to becoming caring friends. Kidder’s narrative is open-eyed and compassionate.
    • 5/5
      In the 80's I read Tracy Kidder's The Soul of a New Machine. I remember being so rivited by it that I read it twice. The subject of his next books didn't interest me and I forgot about him. Recently I picked up this one - about the residents of a nursing home in New England. It was interesting to meet all the people. Not riviting but interesting.
    • 5/5
      I never tire of Tracy Kidder’s writing. I’ve read most of his books, including the Pulitzer Prize winner Soul of a New Machine. This book, Old Friends, is written in Kidder’s typical fly on the wall style. It’s about the residents at Linda Manor nursing home. We spend time with a variety of patients, from the quaint to the bizarre. Some of the relationships are touching, especially the one between Joe and Lou, two unlikely friends from two different generations. Many of the stories are heart wrenching and almost too difficult to finish. Being in my late 60s, I probably shouldn’t be reading books about life inside nursing homes, but I can’t resist Tracy Kidder. This book, like all his others, is a gem.
    • 5/5
      Beautiful. Pure, clean writing that made me less afraid of nursing homes, disabled old people, and my own aging. I still don't want to stick around after I'm no longer able to read or use the bathroom by myself, because I know that most folks aren't as well cared for as those at Linda Manor, but that's irrelevant. What is relevant is that Kidder is an amazing writer, and I was sad when this book was over and I had to say goodbye to all the folks I got to know and care about.
    • 4/5
      This book was very difficult for me to get through, not because it was poorly written but quite the contrary. Kidder's lucent prose brings the sadness and loneliness of the nursing home to vivid life. It's possible that reading this soon after my own grandmother died, much diminished, was unwise. It's haunting and frightening and well-done but I can't say I liked it. I suffered through it in an agony of projection and reflection and grief. Even so, I recommend it- if for nothing else than to bring you into the present, wonderful moment. Take big bites now, before it's too late.
    • 4/5
      I had to read this book for a Human Development class in college and it stuck with me. So much, in fact, that I still remembered it years later and sought it out and re-read it (which I very rarely do).
    • 4/5
      On one hand, bittersweet story of two men who become roomates and, eventually, friends, at a retirement home. On the other hand, an indictment of the way we treat the elderly in the U.S. Highly recommended, along with his other books.