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Exit Lines
The Idyll Inn, the setting for Joan Barfoot’s brilliant eleventh novel, Exit Lines , is a pastel-hued care facility designed for seniors “with healthy incomes but varying hopes, despairs, abilities and deformities.” In scathing detail, Barfoot describes the Idyll Inn’s plastic plants, inoffensive art and pallid recreational activities, all familiar to any reader who has had occasion to visit such a place — or to live in one. Running the show (or so she thinks) is priggish administrator Annabelle Walker, charged with keeping the residents happy, or at least as happy as is required to keep a tidy profit flowing to far-away investors.
But not all residents of the Idyll Inn choose to acquiesce. Sylvia Lodge, one of the Idyll Inn’s first residents, prides herself on her steely backbone, despite crippling arthritis. Affluently widowed, she has selected the Idyll Inn as a less objectionable alternative to a perilous dwindling at home. She coolly refuses to be bossed, certainly not by Annabelle Walker (about whose family Sylvia keeps a dark secret), or by her estranged daughter, Nancy, from whom she keeps yet another, even more explosive, secret. Sylvia is determined to unapologetically lay claim to her lifetime of choices, responsibilities and blame, not yet aware that her icy solitude will shortly be broken by the company of three soon-to-be-intimate friends.
Given the facility’s small population, the Idyll Inn’s new inhabitants are bound to have crossed paths. And indeed many have. Wheelchair-confined George Hammond, once a handsome shoe store—owner with a stay-at-home wife and adored daughter, long ago cupped Sylvia’s feet in his hands and admired her well-formed calves. He has done far more with Greta Bauer, his former clerk, whose loneliness as a young immigrant widow with children rendered her available for a comfortable and seemingly uncomplicated affair. Now deposited under the same roof by absent children, the former lovers are in a position to reflect on the consequences of their choices.
Completing the newly formed coterie of friends is tiny Ruth Friedman, a retired Children’s Aid worker who keeps many of the city’s darkest secrets, and whose passionate late-in-life marriage to fellow social worker Bernard did not include children of their own. Now also widowed, her grief unfathomably deep, she has taken to cheerfully reading horrifying news stories aloud to her new friends, who are soon to discover that these daily doses of gloom are less for their edification than they are in service of a desperate project for which Ruth needs their complicity.
In the wryly funny and wholly compassionate Exit Lines , acclaimed author Joan Barfoot once again treats her readers to an intimate encounter with some fascinating characters engaged in the fight of their lives. Sylvia, George, Greta and Ruth are at times tender, angry, hilarious and deeply flawed, but always utterly and captivatingly human. How do we treat the elderly in our lives? How do we intend to grow old ourselves? Will we ever come to the end of longing? Exit Lines brings to the surface these and other fundamental questions about the nature of life, and its closing.
But not all residents of the Idyll Inn choose to acquiesce. Sylvia Lodge, one of the Idyll Inn’s first residents, prides herself on her steely backbone, despite crippling arthritis. Affluently widowed, she has selected the Idyll Inn as a less objectionable alternative to a perilous dwindling at home. She coolly refuses to be bossed, certainly not by Annabelle Walker (about whose family Sylvia keeps a dark secret), or by her estranged daughter, Nancy, from whom she keeps yet another, even more explosive, secret. Sylvia is determined to unapologetically lay claim to her lifetime of choices, responsibilities and blame, not yet aware that her icy solitude will shortly be broken by the company of three soon-to-be-intimate friends.
Given the facility’s small population, the Idyll Inn’s new inhabitants are bound to have crossed paths. And indeed many have. Wheelchair-confined George Hammond, once a handsome shoe store—owner with a stay-at-home wife and adored daughter, long ago cupped Sylvia’s feet in his hands and admired her well-formed calves. He has done far more with Greta Bauer, his former clerk, whose loneliness as a young immigrant widow with children rendered her available for a comfortable and seemingly uncomplicated affair. Now deposited under the same roof by absent children, the former lovers are in a position to reflect on the consequences of their choices.
Completing the newly formed coterie of friends is tiny Ruth Friedman, a retired Children’s Aid worker who keeps many of the city’s darkest secrets, and whose passionate late-in-life marriage to fellow social worker Bernard did not include children of their own. Now also widowed, her grief unfathomably deep, she has taken to cheerfully reading horrifying news stories aloud to her new friends, who are soon to discover that these daily doses of gloom are less for their edification than they are in service of a desperate project for which Ruth needs their complicity.
In the wryly funny and wholly compassionate Exit Lines , acclaimed author Joan Barfoot once again treats her readers to an intimate encounter with some fascinating characters engaged in the fight of their lives. Sylvia, George, Greta and Ruth are at times tender, angry, hilarious and deeply flawed, but always utterly and captivatingly human. How do we treat the elderly in our lives? How do we intend to grow old ourselves? Will we ever come to the end of longing? Exit Lines brings to the surface these and other fundamental questions about the nature of life, and its closing.
336 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2008
5 people are currently reading
138 people want to read
About the author
Joan Barfoot
17 books32 followersJoan Barfoot is an award-winning novelist whose work has been compared internationally with that of Anne Tyler, Carol Shields, Margaret Drabble and Margaret Atwood. Her novels include Luck in 2005, nominated for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, as well as Abra, which won the Books in Canada first novels award, Dancing in the Dark, which became an award-winning Canadian entry in the Cannes and Toronto Film Festivals, Duet for Three, Family News, Plain Jane, Charlotte and Claudia Keeping in Touch, Some Things About Flying, and Getting Over Edgar. Her 2001 novel, Critical Injuries, was longlisted for the 2002 Man Booker Prize and shortlisted for the 2001 Trillium Book Award. In 1992 she was given the Marian Engel Award. Also a journalist during much of her career, she lives in London, Ontario, Canada.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 51 reviews
August 6, 2020
I TRULY DID NOT ENJOY READING THIS BOOK. My expectation was a surprising novel filled with wisdom and hijinks. But it failed on every level for me
April 5, 2009
It started out good with a varied assortment people entering a retirement home and how they adapt and now are getting into aging and the end of life issues. The character development is good but I am found that it dragged a bit into the second third of the book and I found it difficult to finish.
September 8, 2020
It's hard to imagine how a book set in a retirement home, with all the major characters residents at the home, can be gripping, and yet this impressive book is. Black humour mingles with unflinching honesty and bittersweet humanity in these chapters, to produce an unforgettable read.
November 29, 2008
Exit Lines by Joan Barfoot is different from most books I read. This book makes you sit back and think about your future and where will you be when you hit retirement age.
The novel focuses on four seniors: Sylvia, Greta, Ruth and George who have come to stay at the Idyll Inn-a retirement home. They're not really happy about it but they've come to that age and among health concerns and other things it's easier for them to move into this home where if they need it, care is available. They aren't ready to give up on their lives yet even if their children might be-well maybe, one of them is. The four meet when they first move in and I think even to their surprise forge a friendship. They bond in a strong way, to the point that they will do almost anything for each other.
I think this novel really shows us how sometimes-well probably a lot more than sometimes-the old are forgotten and that is very sad to me. There is one quote from Ruth that really tugged my heart...
'The old, as they might remember from their own youth, are like a separate species: more or less useless, even repellent, and certainly irrelevant. It may even be, Ruth supposes, that they are all those things, and that's just one way the world propels itself onward, and the best trick the old can perform involves acquiesing to the harsh rule of becoming unseen'. ---pg. 81
The elderly have such a beautiful story to tell as this book shows us. Sylvia, Greta, Ruth and George tell us in their own way about the lives they've lived, the mistakes they've made, the hopes and dreams that kept them going and ultimately the losses they've suffered. It shows us at any age we can make special and life friendships that are loyal and amazing. In this novel, the author gives a voice and a story to the old-those who are often forgotten in our society today in a beautifully written way.
Just because people get old and we all will, that does not mean life is over-unless you want it that way. Moving into a retirement home does not mean life is over, you can still meet new people and learn new things. I think this novel is an inspiration to someone like me, who at 42, is eventually heading in that direction. It shows me that you need to live your and live it as fully as you can-enjoy every minute because as this quote shows...
'But some other things are sharp and true: that life comes and goes in a minute of time.' ---pg 316
...You have to grab onto life, take advantage of all it has to offer. Make friends and do new things.
This novel was released in hardcover by Random House on August 12, 2008.
http://peekingbetweenthepages.blogspo...
The novel focuses on four seniors: Sylvia, Greta, Ruth and George who have come to stay at the Idyll Inn-a retirement home. They're not really happy about it but they've come to that age and among health concerns and other things it's easier for them to move into this home where if they need it, care is available. They aren't ready to give up on their lives yet even if their children might be-well maybe, one of them is. The four meet when they first move in and I think even to their surprise forge a friendship. They bond in a strong way, to the point that they will do almost anything for each other.
I think this novel really shows us how sometimes-well probably a lot more than sometimes-the old are forgotten and that is very sad to me. There is one quote from Ruth that really tugged my heart...
'The old, as they might remember from their own youth, are like a separate species: more or less useless, even repellent, and certainly irrelevant. It may even be, Ruth supposes, that they are all those things, and that's just one way the world propels itself onward, and the best trick the old can perform involves acquiesing to the harsh rule of becoming unseen'. ---pg. 81
The elderly have such a beautiful story to tell as this book shows us. Sylvia, Greta, Ruth and George tell us in their own way about the lives they've lived, the mistakes they've made, the hopes and dreams that kept them going and ultimately the losses they've suffered. It shows us at any age we can make special and life friendships that are loyal and amazing. In this novel, the author gives a voice and a story to the old-those who are often forgotten in our society today in a beautifully written way.
Just because people get old and we all will, that does not mean life is over-unless you want it that way. Moving into a retirement home does not mean life is over, you can still meet new people and learn new things. I think this novel is an inspiration to someone like me, who at 42, is eventually heading in that direction. It shows me that you need to live your and live it as fully as you can-enjoy every minute because as this quote shows...
'But some other things are sharp and true: that life comes and goes in a minute of time.' ---pg 316
...You have to grab onto life, take advantage of all it has to offer. Make friends and do new things.
This novel was released in hardcover by Random House on August 12, 2008.
http://peekingbetweenthepages.blogspo...
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 20, 2011
Joan Barfoot has taken her immense talents in a curiously morbid direction recently. In her last novel, "Luck," the action revolved around a funeral parlour after one main character woke up to find her husband dead beside her. In this novel, the focus is on a foursome of aging inhabitants of a retirement home who form a supportive friendship that one woman then draws into her elaborate plan to kill herself on her 75th birthday. Needless to say, this sets off much contemplation of the inevitability of death, the meaning of life and mortality, and the significance of family and of hope.
Joan Barfoot, as usual, shows herself to be an amazing novelist able to infuse even these sombre themes with wit, humour and the joys of sharp character interaction and development -- without sugar-coating the hard realities of illness, failing physical capacities and loss of past loved ones that the four friends endure. Some may find that the ongoing debate over assisted suicide becomes tedious -- as I did during one part of the book. But the surprising conclusion compensates for this somewhat arid stretch and brings this novel to a satisfying end. Trust me, like many of Barfoot's characters, Sylvia, Ruth, Greta and George will stay with you.
Joan Barfoot, as usual, shows herself to be an amazing novelist able to infuse even these sombre themes with wit, humour and the joys of sharp character interaction and development -- without sugar-coating the hard realities of illness, failing physical capacities and loss of past loved ones that the four friends endure. Some may find that the ongoing debate over assisted suicide becomes tedious -- as I did during one part of the book. But the surprising conclusion compensates for this somewhat arid stretch and brings this novel to a satisfying end. Trust me, like many of Barfoot's characters, Sylvia, Ruth, Greta and George will stay with you.
May 22, 2012
Not an easy subject to tackle, 4 different characters in a nursing home, all with their own pasts.
It makes for different reading, for which I commend Barfoot
However,I struggled somewhat with this book.
At times the writing style was hard to get through, the characters also are somewhat confusing ( and confused!)
The plot, as such, was ok, but a few lose ends remained.
It makes for different reading, for which I commend Barfoot
However,I struggled somewhat with this book.
At times the writing style was hard to get through, the characters also are somewhat confusing ( and confused!)
The plot, as such, was ok, but a few lose ends remained.
February 3, 2017
I loved this darkly comic novel about four residents in a newly constructed retirement home. Although it seems at first that the four residents have little in common, it quickly turns out that they are all connected in some way. The author lives in London Ontario, and I read this book in preparation to hearing her speak tomorrow.
December 2, 2022
Barfoot's Dancing in the Dark is one of my favourite novels. I've read it many times. Her other works? Not so much.
Four seniors move into a retirement home and "bond," I guess - they all know each other. In fact, they seem to know a lot of people in the home. Perhaps this is a very small town where no one moves away/goes to live with their children. It's too much of a coincidence.
One of the quartet asks her friends to help her end her life. She has somewhat solid reasons, but do they matter? She has decided she's done living and wants to control how and when she dies. Unfortunately she does not die, nor did I expect her to. Much like just about every book and film that touches on abortion, the act itself never happens, despite all the hand-wringing and arguments for and against. (In this case, waaaay too many pages rationalizing Ruth's choice.)
In the end, an embarrassingly contrived event thwarts Ruth's plans and her friends convince her to live. The end.
I love Barfoot's fluid, insightful writing (despite "oh" being her favourite word), but there is precious little tension in this book and the climax is both anticlimactic and disappointing.
Four seniors move into a retirement home and "bond," I guess - they all know each other. In fact, they seem to know a lot of people in the home. Perhaps this is a very small town where no one moves away/goes to live with their children. It's too much of a coincidence.
One of the quartet asks her friends to help her end her life. She has somewhat solid reasons, but do they matter? She has decided she's done living and wants to control how and when she dies. Unfortunately she does not die, nor did I expect her to. Much like just about every book and film that touches on abortion, the act itself never happens, despite all the hand-wringing and arguments for and against. (In this case, waaaay too many pages rationalizing Ruth's choice.)
In the end, an embarrassingly contrived event thwarts Ruth's plans and her friends convince her to live. The end.
I love Barfoot's fluid, insightful writing (despite "oh" being her favourite word), but there is precious little tension in this book and the climax is both anticlimactic and disappointing.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 22, 2017
If I could give partial points, this would definitely be a 3.5 or more... just not quite 4 for me. It is the story of a very interesting group of seniors living in a senior's residence and how they all come together to form their own little 'family' even though they did not have much to do with each other in their earlier lives. It is a very interesting look at late-in-life / end-of-life issues and how one looks differently at things as your mortality becomes more real. I actually feel that I might have liked this book better if not for the timing... I had been taking care of my 90 year old parents who were each battling cancer while I read this. However, I did put it on the reading list for masters level health professionals as required reading.
September 8, 2023
EXIT LINES struck a deeply personal chord with me. Having been very close to the challenges, bravery, and indignities of aging of my own elderly relatives - who were once young and active movers and shakers - the novel captured the raw essence of growing old. Despite the weighty subject matter, Joan Barfoot's portrayal of old age is never morbid but is richly infused with dark humor, offering an authentic and poignant reflection on the choices, responsibilities, and secrets that shape our lives as we humbly contemplate our own journey into old age.
November 29, 2017
At the beginning, I thought "Oh no, is this like the Old Lady Who Broke all the Rules?" Then I realized it wasn't like that, when it was so slow to develop. There was a lot of back story which was interesting but not always that exciting, or for that matter necessary.
The end of the novel was definitely the best part of the book, with an interesting perspective which lifted up the novel, but getting there was slow going.
The end of the novel was definitely the best part of the book, with an interesting perspective which lifted up the novel, but getting there was slow going.
April 29, 2023
I tried night after night and couldn't finish it. Found the storyline wasn't really going anywhere. Yes, I understand what being elderly must feel like and what they must go through physically as well as emotionally. Have no idea how it ended and that is okay.
Far too many books out there to get hung up on one that you aren't enjoying.
Far too many books out there to get hung up on one that you aren't enjoying.
March 11, 2018
What a read. Being in this group of "forgottens" it was a great read. The "reading group", in Mt. Brydges/ON all thought the book was less. The authors' views on us "old goats" was hilarious! Good read.
June 28, 2018
I think this might be best suited for those people of a "certain age." Being of that age myself, I found this book fascinating, especially in terms of the inner workings of the main characters. There is alos lots of food for thought and discussion.
September 12, 2019
This took a different turn from what I expected. Barfoot writes well and, in this book, develops the characters fully. Plot takes a back seat while little by little we learn significant pieces of the history that shaped the four main characters.
March 4, 2018
This book starts off interesting enough but the last half really goes by slowly.
October 14, 2020
Enjoyed the senior characters and setting, but the plot petered out.
November 25, 2020
I loved it. Perhaps because I'm the right demographic. It's funny and thoughtful and has an undercurrent of plot that satisfies. Going to suggest it to my book club.
May 21, 2023
so depressing!
November 25, 2023
2.5 stars
June 3, 2012
This novel is set in a rather exclusive retirement home (very specifically not a nursing home) in a non-specified small town in Canada. The brand shiny new Idyll Inn opens its doors and welcomes its new residents followed by their rag tag assortment of family members and moving teams. There’s well to do Chairlady of every charity board in town, wife of lawyer Sylvia who moves herself in unaided by, indeed without telling her only daughter Nancy. She demands a room with a view and a balcony and installs her own mini fridge for all the little necessities of life, namely a good bottle of wine or two. And proceeds to be unbendingly strict about the standard of living she is accustomed to and will not have these changed simply because she’s taken a fall or two and no longer feels safe living alone.
There’s Greta, escapee of war and foreign shores many years ago, widowed young and mother to three grown up girls who follow her into the Idyll and fuss about her constantly. Each has chipped in for part of the rent Greta could never afford alone in order to ensure she is living in luxury in her old age, they make sure she’s all settled in and comfortable before the three of them fly off to their separate and far off lives, calling often but visiting rarely. Greta passes her time by knitted voraciously in bright cheerful clashing colours and trying her hardest to stop her mind from slipping back into her native tongue as she slowly loses the English she learned so many years ago.
Crotchety George, one of very few males to have made it to such a ripe old age, he is a victim of a debilitating stroke that has left him wheel chair bound, stolen his entire left side, fuddled his brain and his tongue and most viciously left him unable to live alone, fearing the unexpected and humiliating events that can befall a man in the middle of the night in his own home. He is escorted by his daughter Colette and her husband, both are anxious to settle him in and be off quickly back to their busy lives, Colette entreating her father constantly to ‘be good’ lest the Idyll staff find him too troublesome and kick him out of this house of luxury and into a far less amenable nursing home situation. Collette cries often, pleads and cajoles her father, promises she’s doing this all for ‘his own good’ and then she too flies off to her distant home visiting perhaps once more within the novel and becoming increasingly short with George during his frequent phone calls.
Then, the final member of our protagonist gang, is Ruth, younger than the rest but more wizened by far, her one time gymnasts body is bent and contorted by osteoporosis, she appears almost bent double and relies upon a stroller to get around the common areas of the Idyll Inn ever so slowly. Also widowed and childless Ruth has no family and has come to this place with one very specific goal, to recruit some friends – accomplices really to aide her in the swift and timely ending of her own life.
The novel follows the four as they meet in the Idyll Inn some for the first time, some who knew each other from their previous existences in this small town. George was a handsome and charming Shoe salesman who fitted Sylvia’s feet often and once knew Greta far more intimately than Sylvia and Ruth could have imagined. Sylvia chaired a charity board for the children’s service that Ruth dedicated her life to working for. Ruth and Greta share a common if opposite history in the war that drove Greta from her homeland and cost Ruth many of her ancestors. Sylvia also has a dark bit of history known only to herself but involving the woman hired to run the Idyll inn on a daily basis a Miss Annabel Walker, the daughter of Sylvia’s lawyer husbands business partner Peter Walker, who was something else entirely to Sylvia.
All these entanglements and previous histories and sordid tales come out one by one as the foursome bonds at the Inn, sitting on Sylvia’s deck or sharing a bottle of wine, helping George with his rehab or complaining about the petty rules and bland meals of the Inn. They are getting along tolerably and each coping with their own burdens until Ruth decides the time has come and drops on them all the bombshell of a favour she has to ask of them. At this point the novel becomes something else entirely as they each wrestle with the idea of euthanasia, the ideas of sin, god, hell, morality, nobility, heroism, loneliness and hope, and - more pressingly the logistics of actually doing the deed.
A very well written and darkly funny novel it is an easy read on the face of it but touches on some dark and some deep issues, not the least of which being out treatment of the aged in our society and our families and our inability to see them as people endowed with a wealth of history and experience rather than irrelevant burdens to be shut away in tidy communities and ignored. Thought provoking and extremely readable, I enjoyed Joan Barfoot’s ‘Exit Lines’ greatly.
There’s Greta, escapee of war and foreign shores many years ago, widowed young and mother to three grown up girls who follow her into the Idyll and fuss about her constantly. Each has chipped in for part of the rent Greta could never afford alone in order to ensure she is living in luxury in her old age, they make sure she’s all settled in and comfortable before the three of them fly off to their separate and far off lives, calling often but visiting rarely. Greta passes her time by knitted voraciously in bright cheerful clashing colours and trying her hardest to stop her mind from slipping back into her native tongue as she slowly loses the English she learned so many years ago.
Crotchety George, one of very few males to have made it to such a ripe old age, he is a victim of a debilitating stroke that has left him wheel chair bound, stolen his entire left side, fuddled his brain and his tongue and most viciously left him unable to live alone, fearing the unexpected and humiliating events that can befall a man in the middle of the night in his own home. He is escorted by his daughter Colette and her husband, both are anxious to settle him in and be off quickly back to their busy lives, Colette entreating her father constantly to ‘be good’ lest the Idyll staff find him too troublesome and kick him out of this house of luxury and into a far less amenable nursing home situation. Collette cries often, pleads and cajoles her father, promises she’s doing this all for ‘his own good’ and then she too flies off to her distant home visiting perhaps once more within the novel and becoming increasingly short with George during his frequent phone calls.
Then, the final member of our protagonist gang, is Ruth, younger than the rest but more wizened by far, her one time gymnasts body is bent and contorted by osteoporosis, she appears almost bent double and relies upon a stroller to get around the common areas of the Idyll Inn ever so slowly. Also widowed and childless Ruth has no family and has come to this place with one very specific goal, to recruit some friends – accomplices really to aide her in the swift and timely ending of her own life.
The novel follows the four as they meet in the Idyll Inn some for the first time, some who knew each other from their previous existences in this small town. George was a handsome and charming Shoe salesman who fitted Sylvia’s feet often and once knew Greta far more intimately than Sylvia and Ruth could have imagined. Sylvia chaired a charity board for the children’s service that Ruth dedicated her life to working for. Ruth and Greta share a common if opposite history in the war that drove Greta from her homeland and cost Ruth many of her ancestors. Sylvia also has a dark bit of history known only to herself but involving the woman hired to run the Idyll inn on a daily basis a Miss Annabel Walker, the daughter of Sylvia’s lawyer husbands business partner Peter Walker, who was something else entirely to Sylvia.
All these entanglements and previous histories and sordid tales come out one by one as the foursome bonds at the Inn, sitting on Sylvia’s deck or sharing a bottle of wine, helping George with his rehab or complaining about the petty rules and bland meals of the Inn. They are getting along tolerably and each coping with their own burdens until Ruth decides the time has come and drops on them all the bombshell of a favour she has to ask of them. At this point the novel becomes something else entirely as they each wrestle with the idea of euthanasia, the ideas of sin, god, hell, morality, nobility, heroism, loneliness and hope, and - more pressingly the logistics of actually doing the deed.
A very well written and darkly funny novel it is an easy read on the face of it but touches on some dark and some deep issues, not the least of which being out treatment of the aged in our society and our families and our inability to see them as people endowed with a wealth of history and experience rather than irrelevant burdens to be shut away in tidy communities and ignored. Thought provoking and extremely readable, I enjoyed Joan Barfoot’s ‘Exit Lines’ greatly.
February 24, 2017
A subject that may have put me off kept me entranced. The characters were well portrayed and the story drifted smoothly from chapter to chapter.
Held my attention throughout. The end was an anticlimax. Yet, one of the best books I have read lately.
Held my attention throughout. The end was an anticlimax. Yet, one of the best books I have read lately.
November 8, 2008
A dark comic novel of four friends in a retirement home, pondering topics of life, death, family, children, sex...essentially their past lives and how they relate to one another. A surprise twist when the age-old euthanasia debate comes up and the toughest form test of friendship is put to the test. Favourite quote on life/death/rainbows: “Sometimes I see shapes and colours that I know aren’t really there. I think that’s just because of a new drug my doctor is trying, but in a way it’s also how I tend to see life: in a big curve, like a rainbow. It starts with an arc that shades upwards for a while, and then it goes along with bumpy patches but more or less nicely flat and pastel for quite a distance, until it begins heading downward. It declines and turns grey. And I don’t want to decline past a still fairly good, reasonably bright end point. As it seems to me too many lives do. AS we can see here every day, with one person or another going downhill. So I want to grab the moment while I’m right between what’s worthwhile and what’s not.” (163)
February 8, 2011
I'd give this enjoyable read a 3.5 star rating actually. Life in a newly opened retirement home brings 4 people together into a close-knit friendship. The story features each one of the four---their childhood, marriages, careers (all the external trappings and accomplishments of a full life) but then shifts deeper into their internal dialogue about their relationships with their adult children, their views about their failing bodies, their beliefs and ethics, the good and the bad in the world, the perspectives of the young and old (about themselves and about the other end of the age spectrum). Even though it covers past experiences they were less proud of, it didn't really seem like it was as regret but just more of a looking back on one's life story "as is". Then to add to this, one of them decides to set and orchestrate her own death....which consumes them all.
February 6, 2013
The idea behind the book is great, some of the writing was very compelling, but unfortunately the characters tended to be stereotypes rather than real people. The struggling immigrant woman, the social worker who never had children and has been crippled by the past (both her's and her family history) the socialite with the sharp tongue... the story could have been so much richer but ultimately she did not get "deep enough" with the characters. Also I found the ending unsatisfying, not because "no one died" but I didn't find any true resolution. Although, maybe that is the point.
There were details; phrases that I found quite wonderful, but overall it did not achieve the initial promise.
There were details; phrases that I found quite wonderful, but overall it did not achieve the initial promise.
December 11, 2014
This book made literally zero impact on my life and will soon be forgotten. Exit Lines is an anticlimactic tale of four individuals in a nursing style home who reminisce on their younger years while trying to convince Ruth, the most healthiest one, not to kill herself. Ruth remains firm on the decision that the world sucks and begs her new friends to help her end her life. That's about it. This is probably one of my shortest reviews I've written because I was just so, incredibly bored by it all. Warning, there is no big, final finish to this book. It creeps by at the same mundane pace despite the intrigue of a possible murder/suicide. 2 stars.
October 20, 2011
I loved this book, truly deserving of the word “romp” through the lives of four octogenarians. Barfoot’s writing is wise and wry as she ponders life’s big questions with wit. We see characters who are fleshed out, passionate people behind the old-age camouflage of invisibility. I laughed and commiserated as Barfoot explored the loss of dignity and autonomy in old age, and gained insight into what makes life worth living. A jewel of a book. If you’re over 60, read this … and see where you’re headed.
June 1, 2014
Life, aging, friendship, hope...thought provoking and a bit macabre but an okay read. Lots of my peers are dealing with parent care, faced with their elders' health issues, relocation into care homes so this was interesting from the point of view of the elderly. They have had full lives, jobs, families, affairs and have to face the limits and sometimes humiliations imposed upon them by health, circumstance and caregivers. Doesn't matter how close we are to facing our mortality, until the end we are part of humanity.
September 1, 2013
I loved this book and was surprised to see that others didn't! Maybe it is my age (58) and the fact that my mother has been in a couple of retirement homes for respite, and an elderly aunt and uncle live in one. I thought the book was very funny and a bit sad, and I had to stop now and then to think about what I had just read, and consider my own perspectives of aging and my (and my mother's) future.
June 3, 2009
This took place in a new retirement home. Four people connect. One doesn't want to continue beyond a certain point in her life. The book is concerned with friendships, relationships with adult children, aging. It is a tad too close to the bone for me personally, but it is interesting.
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