I just finished Jimi Hendrix Turns Eighty by Tim Sandlin. It takes place in an assisted living facility in the year 2022. Residents may have copped out and joined the corporate world, etc. midlife, but they are reliving the 60's now. I found the book hilarious (with scenes like getting naked and throwing pants, panties, adult diapers at the band), but a bit scary because of the vivid descriptions about what it might feel like to live without full control of your own life and body. Still - I'd recommend the book highly."After crafting uproarious tales about fatherhood (Social Blunders, 1995) and Washington sleaze (Honey Don't, 2003), Sandlin asks, What will the age of assisted living be like for boomers who longed for the Age of Aquarius? It's 2022, and Guy Fontaine, a widower from Oklahoma, finds himself committed to a California old-folks facility where the flamboyant residents have reverted to the pursuits of their glory days, the late 1960s. Pot smoking, group sex, a rock band called Acid Reflux, cliques formed according to where you were during the Summer of Love, and the motto "don't trust anyone under sixty" all make for a wild, sometimes grotesque milieu overseen by a bitchy director who treats the oldsters like idiot children and a staff doctor who overmedicates them. When Guy inadvertently jump-starts an insurrection, the old hippies, old hands at civil disobedience, take over the compound. Hilarious in the fine-tuned details and rapid-fire dialogue, Sandlin's antic yet precision-aimed and unfailingly entertaining novel is a mordantly witty, covertly poignant, and genuinely insightful dissection of our fear and loathing of old age. Donna Seaman
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