This is a book about ageing. It’s not prescriptive: it does have some practices but they are integrated into the text. It’s mostly full of stories that are there to encourage us and to comfort us, about our own ageing and dying and about it happening to others we love. Likewise the author - a popular Buddhist teacher who is in her seventies - writes about her own ageing and about the ageing of people she has known, like her Zen teacher and her friend Jenny who has Lewy Body dementia. Every story is told with great humour and compassion and I am convinced that this book can be enjoyed by anybody, of any age. The author has no theory to outline or anything to convince us of. There is also no overt narrative: every chapter is an essay (the subtitle of the book is Notes on the Home Stretch which pretty much sums it up). Chapters include We Will Be Ancestors Too and Meeting the Final Deadline.

208pp, 227 x 151 mm, Paperback, 2022, RRP £16.99