Thomas Murphy

Trying to weasel out of an appointment with the neurologist that his only child, Máire, has cornered him into, the poet Thomas Murphy-exuberant singer of the oldies; friend of the down-and-out; tough, honest, and all-around good guy-contemplates his sunset years. Máire worries that Murph is losing his memory. Murph wonders what to do with the rest of his life. Even as he doubts it, Murph's mind, full of wit, worry, meditation, and plain fun, is a creative traveler, jumping from fact to memory to a whole imagined universe. He conjures the islands that have shaped him: Manhattan, his longtime home, and Inishmaan, off the Irish coast, where the rocks and the sea gave him poetry. He muses on the dead: Oona, his wife of fiftysome years, and Greenberg, his best friend. He embraces the living: his scolding, loving daughter and William, his grandson, a small and delicious replica of himself. Then, into his life, under bizarre circumstances, comes Sarah, less than half his age and blind, who sees into his heart and shares an attitude that "looks" outward toward joy, beauty, and the suffering world-what to do with the rest of one's life.