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Unica Edad: La Vida, La
Dos mujeres de distintas generaciones descubren el poder rejuvenecedor de la amistad. A los cuarenta y cuatro anos, Leah no sobrellevaba con desenvoltura el paso del tiempo. En medio de una cultura que idolatra la juventud, se sentia vieja y vacia por dentro. Entonces conocio a Adele -una mujer que nunca espero llegar a los noventa y cuatro anos- que se sentia sola y olvidada, y vivia en un hogar de ancianos. Cuando Leah acepta pasar una hora semanal con Adele - que es ciega- no imagina hasta que punto la amistad que nacera entre ellas cambiara la vida de ambas. Con la anciana como su anfitriona, Leah comienza a participar asiduamente en las actividades del hogar. Gradualmente, su propio temor a envejecer se desvanece al ver que Adele -fuerte, independiente y entusiasta- es en cierta forma mas joven que ella. Con Adele es posible hablar de todo: de la vida, del sexo, de la vejez, de la muerte y tambien de los milagros. Y tambien es posible reir.La conmovedora historia del encuentro entre estas dos mujeres tan humanas como maravillosas, separadas por una diferencia de cincuenta anos, revela que si hay amor solo existe una edad: la de estar vivos."Este es uno de esos raros libros que van a parar de inmediato al estante de mis favoritos, aquellos que atesoro para leer una y otra vez. Me recuerda el poder que la vida, con toda su riqueza de experiencias, tiene para ofrecemos. Adele es una mujer que tiene mucho para ensenamos y se gana nuestro afecto y respeto."-Jamie Lee CurtisLa aclamada actriz estadounidense Jamie Lee Curtis ha adquirido los derechos para realizar la version cinematografica.
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First published January 1, 1999
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 30 reviews
August 7, 2016
This is the perfect book to keep score on. On Christmas, we played Yahtzee in the living room, rattling the dice in a cup and throwing them onto a wooden tray. Someone passed around books for us to hold in our laps and use as a hard surface for our score sheets. With six people playing, it took a long time for it to be my turn, so I flipped through this book in the interim.
Watching people roll dice would be a better use of your time.
I took an instant dislike to Komaiko, the narrator of this memoir story about a woman who thinks she is old. She meets a woman who is actually old. And I guess a book happens. I didn't get that far. The big red stamp on the book's first page -- WITHDRAWN FEB 2006 -- should have been clue. The library couldn't give this book away for free, so they chucked it.
The book opens with an anecdote of pure nonsense. (The whole book is likely 190 pages of nonsense.) First lines: "To begin with, I was not aging graciously. Not that I ever had." It's the night of the moon landing (or Kubrick's facsimile, who knows?) Neil Armstrong says his famous spiel, and our narrator wails, "I'm old. I'm seventeen!"
The moon landing is all about her.
On the next page, she says, "I finally reached a point of peace one night during puberty when I decided I would believe in God's goodness if He could perform two miracles." One is liposuction, the other is living until 105, but having the body and brain of a 25-year-old. Speaking of God: Goddamn, this woman is shallow.
She says thirty years after making this wish, she was 44 and living in Los Angeles.
Let's do some math.
She has her age crisis during the moon landing at seventeen. But she "finally" reaches a point of peace... when she's fourteen. She has discovered the secret to eternal youth! She's already living backwards! Like Benjamin Button.
Oh wait, that has already been done, and would be more interesting.
She continues whining and being a self-entitled Baby Boomer, aka, the reason for every problem we have on this planet right now -- low wages, climate change, poor education, etc. I stabbed my Yahtzee pencil through a few pages.
I read enough to see the narrator volunteer to spend time with an old woman, who I guess will teach her valuable life lessons. "She'll probably die at the end," my friend said. I flipped to the last page. "No matter how old a person is, if she has love in her life, there is only one age--alive." No, the old woman isn't dead, but the narrator still seems incapable of any sort of deep thought. So I tore a few pages of the book in half (I'd been drinking) and went back to playing Yahtzee.
The dice clattered across the little tray once, twice, three times. No full house. No four of a kind. I needed to put my score in the wild-card space, which is called Chance, like my name. My bad Yahtzee joke (are there good Yahtzee jokes?) was to say, "That's my age!" every time someone fills in Chance, whether they rolled a 12 or a 29. Sometimes it was true; it was my age. But two years ago, I became too old for that joke to ever be a true statement again. The dice can never roll a number that high. I filled in the blank. I kept my joke to myself. It, too, had gotten old. The dice rolled on.
Watching people roll dice would be a better use of your time.
I took an instant dislike to Komaiko, the narrator of this memoir story about a woman who thinks she is old. She meets a woman who is actually old. And I guess a book happens. I didn't get that far. The big red stamp on the book's first page -- WITHDRAWN FEB 2006 -- should have been clue. The library couldn't give this book away for free, so they chucked it.
The book opens with an anecdote of pure nonsense. (The whole book is likely 190 pages of nonsense.) First lines: "To begin with, I was not aging graciously. Not that I ever had." It's the night of the moon landing (or Kubrick's facsimile, who knows?) Neil Armstrong says his famous spiel, and our narrator wails, "I'm old. I'm seventeen!"
The moon landing is all about her.
On the next page, she says, "I finally reached a point of peace one night during puberty when I decided I would believe in God's goodness if He could perform two miracles." One is liposuction, the other is living until 105, but having the body and brain of a 25-year-old. Speaking of God: Goddamn, this woman is shallow.
She says thirty years after making this wish, she was 44 and living in Los Angeles.
Let's do some math.
She has her age crisis during the moon landing at seventeen. But she "finally" reaches a point of peace... when she's fourteen. She has discovered the secret to eternal youth! She's already living backwards! Like Benjamin Button.
Oh wait, that has already been done, and would be more interesting.
She continues whining and being a self-entitled Baby Boomer, aka, the reason for every problem we have on this planet right now -- low wages, climate change, poor education, etc. I stabbed my Yahtzee pencil through a few pages.
I read enough to see the narrator volunteer to spend time with an old woman, who I guess will teach her valuable life lessons. "She'll probably die at the end," my friend said. I flipped to the last page. "No matter how old a person is, if she has love in her life, there is only one age--alive." No, the old woman isn't dead, but the narrator still seems incapable of any sort of deep thought. So I tore a few pages of the book in half (I'd been drinking) and went back to playing Yahtzee.
The dice clattered across the little tray once, twice, three times. No full house. No four of a kind. I needed to put my score in the wild-card space, which is called Chance, like my name. My bad Yahtzee joke (are there good Yahtzee jokes?) was to say, "That's my age!" every time someone fills in Chance, whether they rolled a 12 or a 29. Sometimes it was true; it was my age. But two years ago, I became too old for that joke to ever be a true statement again. The dice can never roll a number that high. I filled in the blank. I kept my joke to myself. It, too, had gotten old. The dice rolled on.
April 5, 2018
I liked the idea behind this book, but for me the writing, and the introspection, fell flat.
The author's fixation with old people colors every interaction in this book. At some point you are allowed to just think of a friend as a person, not "an old person".
The author's fixation with old people colors every interaction in this book. At some point you are allowed to just think of a friend as a person, not "an old person".
April 8, 2025
Honest. Depicting the struggle of being 40 and growing older. The point of it was how Leah is dealing with growing older more than the old woman. Leah writes about how her friends are surface level while being surface level herself. Overall good read, I like the honesty and truth.
August 4, 2024
A enjoyable read about a woman in her 40s who volunteers to visit weekly a woman in her 90s at a retirement home. A sweet friendship blossoms.
April 30, 2008
Baby-boomer and children’s author Leah Komaiko was convinced that she was washed up and hung out to dry at age 44: “Now I was older. To sleep, I had to have a choice of heating pads (steam or dry for back pain), a night neck collar, lavender aromatherapy, valerian root, calcium magnesium and vitamin D to ward off osteoporosis, and a fan or air conditioner running twelve months a year to block out the noise from my neighbor’s barking dogs...”
After deciding that a matchmaking service wasn’t the answer to her low spirits, Leah considered a different type of match—she signed up to be a volunteer with the Elder Corps and was matched with a senior.
When Leah met her match, blind 93-year-old Adele, she thought that she’d made a mistake. Adele was Leah’s least favorite kind of old lady: “brash, independent, with the sensitivity of a lout, who needed to be the center of attention, and who thought she could say whatever she wanted to say and get away with it because she was old.”
Somehow Leah managed to stick with her match and she ended up spending many more hours with Adele each week than the one hour she had committed to serving. Although they were tentative acquaintances at first, their relationship evolved into a true friendship, despite the 50-year difference in their ages.
This merry and moving memoir is recommended for anyone who wants an intriguing look at aging.
After deciding that a matchmaking service wasn’t the answer to her low spirits, Leah considered a different type of match—she signed up to be a volunteer with the Elder Corps and was matched with a senior.
When Leah met her match, blind 93-year-old Adele, she thought that she’d made a mistake. Adele was Leah’s least favorite kind of old lady: “brash, independent, with the sensitivity of a lout, who needed to be the center of attention, and who thought she could say whatever she wanted to say and get away with it because she was old.”
Somehow Leah managed to stick with her match and she ended up spending many more hours with Adele each week than the one hour she had committed to serving. Although they were tentative acquaintances at first, their relationship evolved into a true friendship, despite the 50-year difference in their ages.
This merry and moving memoir is recommended for anyone who wants an intriguing look at aging.
July 7, 2010
this is a wonderful little book. the author Leah was afraid of elderly people growing up and now feels OLD at 44. she volunteers to be a companion to someone in an nursing home. she is paired up with Adele, a 94 year old women who is blind. At first Leah thinks she has made a mistake but soon learns Adele has a lot to teach her. I loved this quote from the book-"No matter how old a person is-if she has love in her life, there is only one age-alive".
May 1, 2011
A touching and utterly honest story of the friendship between a woman in a nursing home and a female writer. There are some laugh-out-loud funny moments and some smile moments, and there are precious and sad moments. Maybe the story will urge the reader to go out and collect a nursing home friend; I hope so. It will bring most readers to some new insights. An enjoyable, easy-read book full of small surprises and surprising honesty.
June 11, 2012
Very easy story to get into. Easy and entertaining reading. Adele was a much more likable person than the author. At times I thought the author was incredibly vain and selfish. Overall I enjoyed the book and finished it in a day. .
May 7, 2017
A pretty honest picture of life in an upscale nursing home as the author "adopts" 93-year-old Adele, who is healthy, sharp, dresses well and is blind.
As the weekly visits draw the two women closer, it is Leah who learns to appreciate and see things from Adele's perspective. The story is simply told in short chapters and gives a window on aging, caregivers, loneliness, and need for sincere friendship. The fact that it takes place in L.A. while Adele's family is far away, only increases her growing affection for Leah (who in mid-life has lost her own mother and father).
As the weekly visits draw the two women closer, it is Leah who learns to appreciate and see things from Adele's perspective. The story is simply told in short chapters and gives a window on aging, caregivers, loneliness, and need for sincere friendship. The fact that it takes place in L.A. while Adele's family is far away, only increases her growing affection for Leah (who in mid-life has lost her own mother and father).
January 19, 2023
pfff…. neither good nor bad, just a book.
I liked the meaning that the author wanted to give to the book, and I liked Adele and Leah a lot, but something didn’t work for me. Maybe it was that the scenes were always in the same place and similar situation or that sometimes i didn’t understand what was the reason to write some chapters.
I liked the meaning that the author wanted to give to the book, and I liked Adele and Leah a lot, but something didn’t work for me. Maybe it was that the scenes were always in the same place and similar situation or that sometimes i didn’t understand what was the reason to write some chapters.
January 8, 2023
My new fave book! I have been volunteering with elders since I was 12 years old (& continue to do so today). This book has touched my soul❤️
July 4, 2023
Interesting book on approaching old age and learning to value it through an older person. Kind of a female Tuesdays with Morrie.
August 14, 2023
A short but sweet read. A grounding read to refocus on friendship and the inherent beauty of life
October 11, 2024
gently feisty and loving
January 19, 2026
Read more like a dear diary entries. Not much depth.
Read
February 12, 2026review text for 3730
January 11, 2023
Age has the potential to be more than a number… it can be an experience. BUT it’s important to sow now (i.e. connectivity, meaningful & current relationships, activities) what I want to reap later.
June 3, 2010
I truly enjoyed this very touching memoir that allows the reader to share a warm, loving, often funny friendship between the author and a lonely, blind and very interesting 94 year old woman who is living in a nursing home. The author's original one hour a week volunteer visits became a strong and trusting friendship. She learns a great deal about love and life..."No matter how old a person is, if she has love in her life, there is only one age...alive." Their friendship brought new life to both of them!
Leah Komaiko, the author, is a very successful writer who has written, many children's books...such as the Annie Bananie books and more.
Lovely story!
Leah Komaiko, the author, is a very successful writer who has written, many children's books...such as the Annie Bananie books and more.
Lovely story!
July 11, 2013
In this memoir, 44-year-old Leah documents her developing friendship with 94-year-old Adele, a blind nursing home resident. Leah has decided to "adopt" a senior citizen in an effort to combat her fear of aging. As the two women get to know each other, Leah decides to write a book documenting their friendship. Given Adele's age, you'd think that there would be many anecdotes about her life or how the lives of these women differed. However, I had the feeling that it was all about Leah, her insecurities and her ambivalence about visiting Adele. I couldn't summon much empathy for her at all and would have loved to hear more about Adele.
August 18, 2009
Do you want to smile while you are reading? Do you want to get insight into what it's really like to be old in years and young in spirit? Do you want to feel inspired ?
Then this is a book for you. I brought it to work and offered it to a co-worker, who also thoroughly enjoyed it. When you are finished reading it, you'll probably do the same.
Then this is a book for you. I brought it to work and offered it to a co-worker, who also thoroughly enjoyed it. When you are finished reading it, you'll probably do the same.
June 19, 2014
It's the whiniest book I've ever read. Plus, it's poorly written. The author is well off, and has no real direction or meaning in life and so attempts to find one. So she volunteers for the most selfish reasons and right through to the end, comes off as vain and selfish in the context of this entire project. I loved Adele but I could not summon much sympathy for Leah.
November 11, 2008
The author volunteers to help at a nursing home and agrees to spend an hour a week with a woman (Adele) 50 years older then she is. Adele is quite spunky but she seems to be the one who truly gives help to the author with some great life lessons. Wonderful and often very funny!
November 1, 2016
this was more adele's story than leah's. but it was definitely a story worth telling. even if nothing drastic happened, it was the one that makes you realise that getting old happens to everyone. and volunteering is a good thing. even when it's hard to do!
August 9, 2007
Great book on bridging the gap between the old and the not so old.
Want to Read
January 26, 2008i read some and would like to finish :)
September 27, 2009
The author came across as so vain and shallow that it was hard to enjoy this book.
May 9, 2010
It's a very moving story. Makes me even more certain I do not want to live in a Nursing Home....ever.
June 24, 2010
"No matter how old a person is, if she has love in her life, there is only one age...alive."
July 30, 2011
I grabbed for the title, even thought this usually backfires. It worked this time. This was a fun thoughtful book to read.
April 14, 2017
Leah and Adele's unlikely friendship is not only heartwarming, it is good for thought. .. reexaminating commitment, vulnerability, honesty.
I will be thinking about this story for a long time.
I will be thinking about this story for a long time.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 30 reviews