Seventy

Fearlessly candid, often funny and relentlessly real, Ian Brown—feature-writing journalist and author of the award-winning The Boy in the Moon—recounts his daily reckoning with the milestone age of seventy: here are terrifying questions, if not all the answers, that accompany this milestone age

In Seventy, Ian Brown takes us on a brutally honest, darkly humorous journey through the realities of aging. Seventy follows Brown’s candid reflections in Sixty (“charming, thoughtful and edifying company”—The New York Times), in which decade he felt like an adolescent of the elder set. Here, Brown delves into the reflections, struggles, and revelations of a generation facing the profound truth that their remaining years are now more about what they've experienced than what lies ahead.

At sixty, Brown felt sure aging was a manageable challenge. A decade later, he is anything but calm and certain. The depredations of the body have continued apace; decay is staging a house party. He has less hair and more cholesterol, less confidence and more fear, and is enveloped in a continuous crisis of being. How much time does he have left? Enough to take on new challenges? Can he still book a ski trip into the remote mountains, and if he does, will he remember to bring his skis? Given that the taking of a selfie in which he doesn’t look demented or furious is rare, is desire still possible—and if it isn’t possible, why does he miss it so much? What has replaced it? Brown is desperate to find aged heroes, examples of men and women who managed to make great work later and later in life, despite their infirmities. What is their secret?

And while getting old—any age after seventy—has its liberations, it also has a newfound gravity: if there is something you want to say or do, you had better say it and do it—now. (Even when that ticking clock quells the urge to do anything.)