20 over 60
As Madeleine L’Engle once observed, “The great thing about getting older is that you don’t lose all the other ages you’ve been.” In 20 Over 60, editors Beth Weinhouse and David Galef showcase twenty brilliant short stories by authors over sixty—including luminaries such as Paul Theroux, Joyce Carol Oates, and Jane Gardam—offering a wide-ranging portrait of life in later years: vibrant, unexpected, and full of humor, wisdom, and surprise.
Readers will encounter a retired couple whose hobby is stealing peppermills from restaurants, a woman juggling both her husband and ex-husband in the same hospital, a futuristic nursing home whose designers become its unhappy residents, a woman of a certain age navigating the perils of online dating, and a grandfather helping his granddaughter scatter her mother’s ashes.
Smart, skillful, and often hilarious, these stories celebrate the full spectrum of experience, proving that life after sixty is as rich and alive as ever.
Praise for 20 Over 60
“In 20 over 60, Beth Weinhouse and David Galef have assembled a selection of stories that are assured and often surprising and that testify to the enduring unpredictability of the imagination.
—David Leavitt, author of The Lost Language of Cranes, Shelter in Place, among others, and the forthcoming novel Bright Monday.
“How refreshing: an anthology of fictional stories about people in their 60s and beyond…a wide range of tales from writers like Joyce Carol Oates, Paul Theroux…and the late Jane Gardam. One, “Naughty” by Eileen Pollack, features a woman who’s nonplussed to learn that the man she met online prefers kinky sex. Weinhouse tells AARP that their goal was to “upend the idea of what older protagonists in a story should be.”
–AARP.com
“The twenty stories in 20 Over 60—the writers being over 60—are coming-of-age stories, by which I mean coming of old age. The tales are in turn engaging, moving, sad, sexy, suspenseful, scary, wrenching, amusing, and insightful. They are brilliant and they touch the heart. They are further evidence, if any were needed, that for storytellers, peak ages of creativity may clock in at 60 or 70 or 80. I eagerly await a follow-up anthology titled 20 over 80.”
—Priscilla Long, author of Dancing with the Muse in Old Age
“This wonderful collection of stories is as varied, vibrant, and complex as a group of today’s 60-somethings. It points to how much more to life there is later on, especially now that we’re living longer, and how full of interesting—and hilarious—twists and turns it can be.”
—Sari Botton, editor of Oldster Magazine, and author of And You May Find Yourself..Confessions of a Late-Blooming Gen-X Weirdo