Memoir is Exploration, So Keep Yourself Open: An Interview with Abigail Thomas

Like Abigail Thomas’s previous memoirs and essay collections, Still Life At Eighty: The Next Interesting Thing, is wise, reassuring, funny, and at the very same time unsettling. Thomas manages this apparent contradiction through her signature style: passionate and unwavering honesty. Nothing is off limits, and everything is examined with eager eyes and a dash of acerbic wit.

The primary subject, as her title signals, is aging, how it feels to be turning eighty, facing diminished capabili...