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Walking with Beth: Conversations with My Hundred-Year-Old Friend
NATIONAL BESTSELLER
Merilyn Simonds's Walking with Beth allows us to eavesdrop on two women, one already a centenarian, talking frankly about what scares us growing old. It's a book with a unique take on longevity, full of wisdom, tenderness, joy and the passions that sustain a very long life.
In the spring of 2021, Merilyn Simonds asked her friend Beth Robinson if she’d like to go for a walk. Simonds had just turned 70, still active, still writing, but entering what struck her as a mysterious, even frightening stage of life. Beth, a smart, vibrant woman who’d held a job until she was 99, lived on her own and was as awake to the world as a person half her age. Who better to ask what might come next?
During three years of weekly walks, the conversation between the two women only deepened, as they opened up about their heart-felt passions, the lingering influence of their pasts, and their hopes and fears for the future.
In Walking with Beth, Simonds shares these intimate exchanges, delving into corners of older women’s lives that are rarely seen or spoken about so openly. As Simonds looks forward into a future that seems unknowable, Beth looks back, offering her experience in surviving the later-life blows that batter us all, and more importantly, her wisdom about how to enrich every passing day.
Merilyn Simonds's Walking with Beth allows us to eavesdrop on two women, one already a centenarian, talking frankly about what scares us growing old. It's a book with a unique take on longevity, full of wisdom, tenderness, joy and the passions that sustain a very long life.
In the spring of 2021, Merilyn Simonds asked her friend Beth Robinson if she’d like to go for a walk. Simonds had just turned 70, still active, still writing, but entering what struck her as a mysterious, even frightening stage of life. Beth, a smart, vibrant woman who’d held a job until she was 99, lived on her own and was as awake to the world as a person half her age. Who better to ask what might come next?
During three years of weekly walks, the conversation between the two women only deepened, as they opened up about their heart-felt passions, the lingering influence of their pasts, and their hopes and fears for the future.
In Walking with Beth, Simonds shares these intimate exchanges, delving into corners of older women’s lives that are rarely seen or spoken about so openly. As Simonds looks forward into a future that seems unknowable, Beth looks back, offering her experience in surviving the later-life blows that batter us all, and more importantly, her wisdom about how to enrich every passing day.
- GenresNonfictionCanada
264 pages, Kindle Edition
Published September 23, 2025
18 people are currently reading
165 people want to read
About the author
Merilyn Simonds
23 books60 followersMerilyn Simonds is the author of 18 books, including the novel The Holding, a New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice, and the Canadian classic nonfiction novel, The Convict Lover, a finalist for the Governor General's Award. In 2017, Project Bookmark Canada unveiled a plaque to honour the place of The Convict Lover in Canada’s literary landscape.
Simonds’ short fiction is anthologized internationally and her books are published in the UK, Europe, Asia, Canada, and the United States. In 2012 she published The Paradise Project, a collection of flash fiction hand-printed on an antique press with endpapers made from plants in her garden. The experience of producing the collection in both a digital and book-arts edition is the subject of Gutenberg’s Fingerprint: Paper, Pixels, and the Lasting Impression of Books. Her most recent publication is Refuge, a novel set in Mexico City, New York, and eastern Ontario.
Simonds writes a blog—Books Unpacked—on her website merilynsimonds.com. She shares her life with writer Wayne Grady. They divide their time between Mexico and Canada.
Simonds’ short fiction is anthologized internationally and her books are published in the UK, Europe, Asia, Canada, and the United States. In 2012 she published The Paradise Project, a collection of flash fiction hand-printed on an antique press with endpapers made from plants in her garden. The experience of producing the collection in both a digital and book-arts edition is the subject of Gutenberg’s Fingerprint: Paper, Pixels, and the Lasting Impression of Books. Her most recent publication is Refuge, a novel set in Mexico City, New York, and eastern Ontario.
Simonds writes a blog—Books Unpacked—on her website merilynsimonds.com. She shares her life with writer Wayne Grady. They divide their time between Mexico and Canada.
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
September 12, 2025
I really wanted to like this book. I thought it would inspirational and the cover is just gorgeous. However, I found it really hard to relate to the author and her 100+ year old friend Beth. Maybe it’s because I am in my 30’s? Maybe it’s because of the disjunct interactions? Maybe because I was striving for a deeper meaning which may not exist? Either way this didn’t quite work for me.
Thank you Random House Canada for the complimentary copy.
Thank you Random House Canada for the complimentary copy.
December 30, 2025
This was absolutely beautiful. So full of wisdom and insight into older age, friendship, life, and art. Thoroughly enjoyed every second of this. I implore everyone to read this on audio, the interview at the end is the cherry of top of this book.
November 10, 2025
I am always in awe of resilient centenarians and enjoyed learning more about Beth and her experiences.
October 23, 2025
I was excited to read this, as I know Beth, and can picture and hear her very clearly in my mind. I found the first third of the book a bit tedious, but the momentum picked up so that I was eager to read to the end. Beth is almost an unbelievable character, so pure and refined, and her remarkable age just adds to her mythology.
Read
December 3, 2025it is difficult to describe this book but I would call it a reflective book on life. It was slow at times perhaps some more editing needed but worth finishing
September 24, 2025
“I used to look for love and happiness, understanding and security. What am I looking for now?" (xv) Merilyn Simonds asks so in her most current introspective novel, “Walking with Beth” released on September 23rd. Crafted with almost flash prose pieces, musings, the reader accompanies Simonds through her reflections and ruminations on life and health during her walks with centenarian friend, Beth Robinson. Spanning the timeframe of three years of weekly walks and the fabric of life during Covid, Simonds invites us into the intimacy of two aging women. Also, she takes hold of the reader’s imagination and propels them to confront death.
Published by Random House Canada, “Walking with Beth,” is a poultice, a soothing balm for those seeking solace in the wake of illness and aging, as well, a gentle mentoring for those next in line. Organized into four sections titled, “One Hundred and One, Seventy-One,” “One Hundred and Two, Seventy-Two,” “One Hundred and Three, Seventy-Three,” and “And Counting…,” “Walking with Beth” is comprised of over 246 pieces of encounters and teachings between two women.
Beth became an almost mythic figure to me throughout the reading, and yet, Simonds’ depiction of her friend grounded Beth in an immense glow of humanity and graceful mortality. “Beth is Elizabeth Pierce Robinson, born in Kingston, Ontario, on July 22, 1920, a child of the final year of the Spanish flu pandemic (xiii).” Beth had raised a family in Toronto and also had worked in Montreal as a professor of art therapy. She retired to Lower Beverly Lake in eastern Ontario where she had spent summers as a child and where she and her husband had built a house. After her husband died, she moved back to Kingston and resides there now. Simonds had just moved to Kington from North Bay in the trajectory of a second marriage. It does not fully matter when the two women met, only that the bond and friendship that has grown between them over the years has carried the two women into the older unknown stages of life. Beth has written two books, “My Journey to One Hundred” (2023) and “Please Write” (2015). What resounded with me was Simonds human portrayal of Beth grieving the loss of her daughter and the two women facing mortality and aging eloquently and honestly together.
Merilyn Simonds has written twenty books. I first encountered Simonds in her novel, “The Holding” (2005). I was immediately drawn in to the plotline of “The Holding.” Margaret, her mysterious background and trajectory to reside in the Canadian wilderness stirred me in her connection to plants and her discovery of traces of Katharine, a settler woman who had lived on the same land a century earlier. In entering Katharine’s world through journals, I was further confronted with the hardship and adversity that Margaret faced and endured. Second, I encountered Simonds in “The Convict Lover,” a non-fiction text published in 1996 by Macfarlane, Walter & Ross about the true story of a young woman in early 20th-century Ontario who secretly corresponds through hidden letters with a prisoner in the nearby Kingston Penitentiary. “The Convict Lover” was a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Non-Fiction. It is compelling to me that in 2017, Project Bookmark Canada installed a plaque on the site of the former Kingston Penitentiary rock quarry to honour the place of “The Convict Lover” in Canada's literary landscape and the impact that Simonds has had on her community. Further, she is the founder and first artistic director of the Kingston WritersFest as well as being a juror for the 2023 CBC Nonfiction Prize. Simonds literary legacy and community connections have deeply enriched the Canlit community and beyond.
Simonds is poignant in articulating that Beth, her friend, is her “last guide into the future” (10). That phrase was how I was led into the depths of “Walking with Beth.” In sediments of thought that felt chipped away and laid out carefully for the reader, I walked also with Simonds and Beth in one of the most terrifying elements of a writer’s life, not being able to control the ending of your own story: “I am a writer. I’m used to determining the plot. What confounds me about dying is that I will have no say in the end of this story (162).” An important work for us in negotiating our own mortality, this text gives voice to aging and identity for women, a necessary voice for our Canlit community. In the text becoming an external voice and space for readers to congregate to, what we are guided to understand is not that we need to walk in another’s footsteps, but that we are not alone in life and these bodies.
Thank you to Merilyn Simonds, Random House Canada and River Street Writing for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review!
https://www.sarahailstone.com/book-re...
Published by Random House Canada, “Walking with Beth,” is a poultice, a soothing balm for those seeking solace in the wake of illness and aging, as well, a gentle mentoring for those next in line. Organized into four sections titled, “One Hundred and One, Seventy-One,” “One Hundred and Two, Seventy-Two,” “One Hundred and Three, Seventy-Three,” and “And Counting…,” “Walking with Beth” is comprised of over 246 pieces of encounters and teachings between two women.
Beth became an almost mythic figure to me throughout the reading, and yet, Simonds’ depiction of her friend grounded Beth in an immense glow of humanity and graceful mortality. “Beth is Elizabeth Pierce Robinson, born in Kingston, Ontario, on July 22, 1920, a child of the final year of the Spanish flu pandemic (xiii).” Beth had raised a family in Toronto and also had worked in Montreal as a professor of art therapy. She retired to Lower Beverly Lake in eastern Ontario where she had spent summers as a child and where she and her husband had built a house. After her husband died, she moved back to Kingston and resides there now. Simonds had just moved to Kington from North Bay in the trajectory of a second marriage. It does not fully matter when the two women met, only that the bond and friendship that has grown between them over the years has carried the two women into the older unknown stages of life. Beth has written two books, “My Journey to One Hundred” (2023) and “Please Write” (2015). What resounded with me was Simonds human portrayal of Beth grieving the loss of her daughter and the two women facing mortality and aging eloquently and honestly together.
Merilyn Simonds has written twenty books. I first encountered Simonds in her novel, “The Holding” (2005). I was immediately drawn in to the plotline of “The Holding.” Margaret, her mysterious background and trajectory to reside in the Canadian wilderness stirred me in her connection to plants and her discovery of traces of Katharine, a settler woman who had lived on the same land a century earlier. In entering Katharine’s world through journals, I was further confronted with the hardship and adversity that Margaret faced and endured. Second, I encountered Simonds in “The Convict Lover,” a non-fiction text published in 1996 by Macfarlane, Walter & Ross about the true story of a young woman in early 20th-century Ontario who secretly corresponds through hidden letters with a prisoner in the nearby Kingston Penitentiary. “The Convict Lover” was a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Non-Fiction. It is compelling to me that in 2017, Project Bookmark Canada installed a plaque on the site of the former Kingston Penitentiary rock quarry to honour the place of “The Convict Lover” in Canada's literary landscape and the impact that Simonds has had on her community. Further, she is the founder and first artistic director of the Kingston WritersFest as well as being a juror for the 2023 CBC Nonfiction Prize. Simonds literary legacy and community connections have deeply enriched the Canlit community and beyond.
Simonds is poignant in articulating that Beth, her friend, is her “last guide into the future” (10). That phrase was how I was led into the depths of “Walking with Beth.” In sediments of thought that felt chipped away and laid out carefully for the reader, I walked also with Simonds and Beth in one of the most terrifying elements of a writer’s life, not being able to control the ending of your own story: “I am a writer. I’m used to determining the plot. What confounds me about dying is that I will have no say in the end of this story (162).” An important work for us in negotiating our own mortality, this text gives voice to aging and identity for women, a necessary voice for our Canlit community. In the text becoming an external voice and space for readers to congregate to, what we are guided to understand is not that we need to walk in another’s footsteps, but that we are not alone in life and these bodies.
Thank you to Merilyn Simonds, Random House Canada and River Street Writing for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review!
https://www.sarahailstone.com/book-re...
August 2, 2025
BOOK REVIEW:
Walking With Beth by Merilyn Simonds
Neither Beth nor Merilyn remembers when they met, but they both feel as if they have known each other forever. Merilyn is seventy-one and Beth is almost one hundred and one. They agree that it doesn’t matter when they met. “All that matters is that somehow, somewhere, [their] lives intersected, and [they] said to [themselves], I want that woman as my friend.”
Professionally, Beth was a professor of Art Therapy and Merilyn is a writer. When they start walking together, Merilyn is trying to figure out how to navigate the years that are still to come while Beth is most interested in reminiscing about the years that have already passed. But their discussions are about so much more.
Beth is full of knowledge and wisdom and philosophy and Merilyn is an eager listener and student. There is no outline for what they will talk about. They talk about whatever comes up that day, with great thoughtfulness and a lot of good humour.
While there are no concrete answers to the question of how one should best live as one ages, creativity and imagination seem to be key. And though she appears quite concerned about her age when the book opens, near the end the author writes, “Why, I wonder, are we so daunted by advancing age?” One of the things she learns is that she enjoys being with Beth as much as she enjoys being with her five-year-old granddaughter and her friends of all ages. And, I think, this understanding leads her to enjoy being with herself as well.
I thoroughly enjoyed taking this journey with Beth and Merilyn. For me, this book is about living life to the fullest, with great openness and joy. And while I am about the same age as Merilyn, I think that anyone who contemplates life and aging will enjoy it, no matter what age they are.
Walking With Beth by Merilyn Simonds
Neither Beth nor Merilyn remembers when they met, but they both feel as if they have known each other forever. Merilyn is seventy-one and Beth is almost one hundred and one. They agree that it doesn’t matter when they met. “All that matters is that somehow, somewhere, [their] lives intersected, and [they] said to [themselves], I want that woman as my friend.”
Professionally, Beth was a professor of Art Therapy and Merilyn is a writer. When they start walking together, Merilyn is trying to figure out how to navigate the years that are still to come while Beth is most interested in reminiscing about the years that have already passed. But their discussions are about so much more.
Beth is full of knowledge and wisdom and philosophy and Merilyn is an eager listener and student. There is no outline for what they will talk about. They talk about whatever comes up that day, with great thoughtfulness and a lot of good humour.
While there are no concrete answers to the question of how one should best live as one ages, creativity and imagination seem to be key. And though she appears quite concerned about her age when the book opens, near the end the author writes, “Why, I wonder, are we so daunted by advancing age?” One of the things she learns is that she enjoys being with Beth as much as she enjoys being with her five-year-old granddaughter and her friends of all ages. And, I think, this understanding leads her to enjoy being with herself as well.
I thoroughly enjoyed taking this journey with Beth and Merilyn. For me, this book is about living life to the fullest, with great openness and joy. And while I am about the same age as Merilyn, I think that anyone who contemplates life and aging will enjoy it, no matter what age they are.
August 17, 2025
Merilyn is 70 and Beth is about to turn 101 . They don’t remember when they met but have been friends “forever”.
Merilyn asks Beth to join her on walks and Beth agrees.
They walk and talk; talked about life and ageing and this book is a chronicle of their conversations.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading about Beth’s wisdom as she reminisces about her life journey as she ages and shares her experiences as a woman in later life.
Truly a pleasure to read .
Merilyn asks Beth to join her on walks and Beth agrees.
They walk and talk; talked about life and ageing and this book is a chronicle of their conversations.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading about Beth’s wisdom as she reminisces about her life journey as she ages and shares her experiences as a woman in later life.
Truly a pleasure to read .
October 7, 2025
I really enjoyed the audio and reading the book. Each chapter totally captivated me. Beth and Merilyn's intimate walk and talks remind us to keep on following our passions which happen to be collage, dance and fibre arts for me like Beth. I would love to see her stamp art and Merilyn's Mexican art collection. Merilyn shares her frightening medical diagnoses that she thankfully survives to bring back Kingston Writers fest .
This book will create an interesting discussion in our book club, one member is 93 years old. I wonder if we are recreating our mother relationships with older "crones".
DO read this book!
This book will create an interesting discussion in our book club, one member is 93 years old. I wonder if we are recreating our mother relationships with older "crones".
DO read this book!
October 31, 2025
A touching story of friendship between two women—one in her 70s, the other over 100—full of warmth, humor, and life. That said, the book includes a deeply disturbing moment where the author smothers her very sick 20-year-old cat with a pillow as it struggles, which was shocking and hard to read. The friendship is lovely, but that part left a dark mark on the story for me.
November 3, 2025
I heard about this book through CBC during an interview with the author. The.story left me flat. I had high hopes for it, and it wasn't to my liking. Other readers will love the interactions between two older women taking walks during a global pandemic.
October 23, 2025
Beautiful.
November 5, 2025
Lovely poignant stories about aging and life through the eyes of two women who led different lives.
November 21, 2025
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and contemplating the perspectives and the life lessons contained within. A beautiful story of a wonderful friendship. Thank you for sharing.
December 28, 2025
3.5 rounded up. Two interesting women as well as some Canadian history tidbits
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews