We all age with some ageing better than others. In the expat community in Bangkok, there are many retirees from the West, Japan, and China among others who have discovered a community of the newly minted aged. In Colin Cotterill’s collection of stories, Ageing Disgracefully takes a humorous and life-affirming look at lives of people who, though considerably advanced in years, are still behaving very, very naughtily.
My fellow blogger has a wicked sense of humor and it shines in this collection. Colin has collected and illustrated—with words and drawings—the colorful lives of numerous atrocious elders found along his life journey, from his old home, England, to his new home, Thailand, with stops in Australia the United States.
In Ageing Disgracefully Colin examines the lives of venerable and not so venerable elderly bank robbers, murderers and serial-killers, as well as mere practical jokers, gamblers and perverts, who may remind you of some people you know or live with, or perhaps a person who stares back at us in the mirror!
If you like J.G. Ballard, who was greatly influenced by his war time confinement in Shangai during World War II, look for the story that has one of the best short stories I ever come across to explain the East West divide, birth and reincarnation. Ballard was a great writer of short stories as China Mieville reveals in a collection of Ballard’s stories.
The short story is a wonderful form when it is done right. Cotterill, like Ballard, has an instinctive and rare ability to take the coal dust of raw stories and turn them into small diamonds.
The book is also available for $6.95 on Kindle.
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