Bloomer

It is daunting to grow old in a time and place that does not value old people, but the age group known as Boomers should not be so easily dismissed. They marched against the Vietnam War and were the first generation to be liberated by the contraceptive pill from the fear of unwanted pregnancy. Their teenage years were fuelled by protest songs and peace-and-love idealism, and many are still engaged in forms of activism.

Framed by the turning of the seasons in her small suburban garden, Carol Lefevre’s Bloomer documents the year in which she turned seventy. Memoir threads through meditations on aspects of ageing, from its hidden grief and potential for loneliness to our relationship with the past and with our own mortality.

In this gorgeous, optimistic and eloquent coming-of-old-age book, Boomers emerge as Bloomers – people not at the end of things but still on their way, ready to embrace a late-life flourishing. ,