This is about the old old, not the physically lively sixty and seventy-year-olds, but octogenarians having a voice. The eighties are when it all begins to crumble. This book gives the young and middle-aged insights into the world of the elderly. It deals with frailty, loss, loneliness, and death, but its not a gloomy book: it uses extracts from novels and poems to help in exploring growing old. It balances lightness and seriousness and will have an acute relevance for its older readers. Older people. | Old age. | Australian