Grand Finales

Despite the losses generally associated with ageing, quite a few writers, painters, sculptors, musicians and dancers have managed to extend and repurpose their creative energies. In Grand Finales, author Susan Gubar features women artists-George Eliot, Colette, Georgia O'Keeffe, Isak Dinesen, Marianne Moore, Louise Bourgeois, Gwendolyn Brooks, Mary Lou Williams and Katherine Dunham-who transformed the last stage of existence into a rousing conclusion. She draws on their late lives and works to suggest that seniority can become a time of reinvention and renewal. With pizzazz and bravado, Gubar counters the discrediting of elderly women and clarifies the environments, relationships, activities and attitudes that sponsor a creative old age.