# All Things Consoled

Canonical: https://www.bookquiver.com/elizabeth-hay/all-things-consoled/9780857059147

![All Things Consoled](https://quivercdn.com/covers/maclehose-press/elizabeth-hay/all-things-consoled_978-08-5705-914-7.jpg?v=2026-05-12%2006%3A12%3A02)

- Book: [All Things Consoled](https://www.bookquiver.com/elizabeth-hay/all-things-consoled) ([All Things Consoled.md](https://www.bookquiver.com/elizabeth-hay/all-things-consoled.md))
- Authors: [Elizabeth Hay](https://www.bookquiver.com/elizabeth-hay)
- Publisher: maclehose_press
- Medium: ebook
- ISBN: 978-08-5705-914-7
- Published: 2019-08-22
- Language: en_GB
- Binding: E-book

## Description

Winner of the 2018 Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Award for Non-fiction A poignant, complex and hugely resonant memoir about the shift from being a daughter to a guardian and caregiver, by a prizewinning author. From Elizabeth Hay, one of Canada's most celebrated novelists, comes a startling and beautiful memoir about the drama of her parents' end, and the longer drama of being their daughter. Jean and Gordon Hay were a formidable pair. She was an artist and superlatively frugal; he was a proud and principled schoolteacher with an explosive temper. Elizabeth, the so-called difficult child, always suspected she would end up caring for them in their final years, in part to atone for her childhood sins. Philip Roth once said, " Old age is a massacre". All Things Consoled takes you inside the massacre as Hay's ferociously independent parents become increasingly dependent on her. With remarkable wit and honesty, Hay lays bare the agony of a family coping as old age turns into the tragedy of living too long. In the end she arrives at a more nuanced understanding of her mother and father, and of herself as their daughter. They were and remain the two vivid giants in her life.