Thomas Murphy
by Roger Rosenblatt
The acclaimed, award-winning essayist and memoirist returns to fiction with this reflective, bittersweet tale of love, loss, and wonder in the life of the irrepressible aging poet,Thomas MurphyTrying to weasel out of an appointment with the neurologist that his only child, Máire, has cornered him into, the poet Thomas Murphy— exuberant singer of the oldies; friend of the down-and-out; tough, honest, and all-around good guy—contemplates his sunset years.Máire worries that Murph is losing his memory. Murph wonders what to do with the rest of his life. The older mind is at issue—as he belts out, standing in his skivvies in his apartment house courtyard, "What are you doing the rest of your life?" Even as he doubts it, Murph's mind, full of wit, worry, meditation, and plain fun, is a creative traveler, jumping from fact to memory to a whole imagined universe. He conjures the islands that have shaped him: Manhattan, his longtime home, and...