3 Novels of Life Review

Page Contents

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Nicole at Feed Your Fiction Addiction
Shannon at It Starts at Midnight

Introduction: Life Review

American psychiatrist Dr. Robert N. Butler made the study of the lives of older adults and of the aging process his life’s work at a time when the last years of life were largely neglected in both medicine and public policy. Butler coined the term ageism, by analogy with sexism and racism, to describe discrimination against older people. He raised public consciousness about older adults and their living conditions with his book Why Survive? Being Old in America, which won the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction in 1976. He was the founding director of the National Institute of Aging, a division of the National Institutes of Health, in 1975 and founded the Department of Geriatrics and Adult Development at Mount Sinai Medical Center, the first department of geriatrics at a medical school in the U.S., in 1982.

In his extensive work with older adults, Dr. Butler observed that many of them engaged in a process he called life review. In this process, they remember events and experiences from across their lifetime and think about how they have lived their life. They look for an overall meaning or purpose of their life and come to terms with both their achievements and their doubts or regrets.

Ideally, the life review process allows people to understand and come to own their life. When this happens, they can find forgiveness for themselves and for other people. Such an outcome can lead to psychological healing, a sense of redemption, and acceptance of approaching death.

However, some people may react differently; they may not be able to overcome their feelings of inadequacy, regret, or failure. In such cases life review can result in anxiety, depression, despair, or a desire for revenge.

Although Butler’s concept of life review focuses on older adults, some people may undergo a similar process at other life stages. For example, life evaluations sometimes occur in middle age, when people think about what they’ve accomplished and perhaps ponder a career change while they still have some time left. At any age, a medical condition might prompt a life evaluation. Or a dramatic event—the kind that makes people think of their life in two distinct stages, “life before _____” and “life after _____”—may also prompt such an evaluation.

Since learning about Butler’s concept of life review, I’ve been surprised by how often I see it play out in some way in literary works. Here are three novels I’ve already reviewed on this blog that incorporate life review. I include for each a short description of how it showcases the life review process, but I hope you’ll read the complete linked reviews.

Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk by Kathleen Rooney

This delightful book is a straightforward example of life review as 85-year-old Lillian Boxfish walks readers through both her life and her beloved New York City.

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Evelyn Hugo is an aging actress who’s finally ready to tell her story. She did what she had to do to succeed, she says, and she has no regrets; she’d do it all over again exactly the same way. But what happens in the novel includes her way of atoning for her past.

The Drowning People by Richard Mason

The first-person narrator of this novel lets us know right at the beginning how the story will unfold:

If ever I am to put the events of my life in some sort of order I must begin the sifting now; I must try, I know, to understand what I have done; to understand how I, at the age of seventy, have come to kill my wife and to feel so little remorse over it. (p. 6)

For this poor fellow, the discovery of a key piece of information that had been hidden from him has prompted an abrupt and drastic re-evaluation of his life.