First things first: Toll-Lah-Me. I had to look it up and it made reading the book a much smoother experience. (An alternate is Toll-Lei-Me).

There is a lot in this book about what it is like to get old and to experience dementia and most reviews I have seen focus on this. To be fair there are a lot of insights to be gained about those topics. As someone in their forties I found myself thinking about my future and getting old. How will I cope?

What really stuck with me though is the beauty that can be found in the world, the clarity of thought if we stop making blind, stereotypical assumptions about people and just engage. It would be rare the person who would see a beautiful young woman involve herself in the life of an old man with the onset of dementia and think it was on the up and up. Especially when we learn he gives her control over his complete, and somewhat substantial financial life. But it is in this relationship that truth is found, dignity restored, and justice served.

We all lead cluttered lives that distort our perception of reality (Ptolemy’s apartment and dementia) and so we rely on prejudices and our varieties of experience to quickly make decisions. To often those decisions will not lead to happiness. Such as Ptolemy relying on family to get him through, because isn’t family what you can trust? It isn’t until a truly helpful person turns up, someone who we would all dismiss as a gold-digger, that Ptolemy gains clarity of thought. It is then he can confront his inner demons and set the world right before he leaves.

The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey exemplifies the work of Danny Gilbert (Stumbling Upon Happiness). Our various devices we use to navigate and shortcut the world for the most part causes us to miss the greatest treasures in life, caring relationships. Or in Ptolemy’s case, a literal treasure.