In more than two dozen short personal essays, Turpin offers his quirky take on parenting, weight control, surgery, grey hair, birthdays, dentistry, college life, brothers, and other topics related to daily life.
Written in a casual, highly readable style with illustrations by Miles George Turpin, these essays tell it like it is – at least from the author’s perspective. Readers will feel the authentic voice throughout the work, as if he had gathered a group of friends around the living room to share his stories, and kept them laughing so they wouldn’t leave.
In Ear Today, Ghoul Tomorrow for instance, he reveals problems with melanomas on his face and ear. In telling about his childhood sun exposure in the 1960s and 1970s, he writes: “When overexposure to the sun produced second-degree burns, our mothers would simply apply a greasy, white industrial ointment known as zinc oxide to the afflicted area and hustle us back out into the sun.” Later as an adult following ear surgery to remove skin cancer, he describes the bandage as coming to “an unattractive point at the top” that made him look as if he were “either preparing for a journey to Modor or readying myself for a Star Trek convention.”
Other essays, such as the title story 53 Is the New 38, reveal the problems of middle-aged spread (“I advocate the notion that thermometers should be calibrated by weight, not by temperature, as I would prefer to set the air conditioner to a cool 235 pounds”) and tooth decay (“As I succumbed to the inevitable urge to bite the hard candy, my right molar broke off like an Antarctic ice shelf”). This essay is one of the funniest, and encompasses a range of problems related to aging.
Although an entertaining read, the book would benefit from having a table of contents to help those seeking essays on particular subjects, to assist those who prefer structure to guide them through a book, and to aid potential readers in identifying whether or not the subject matter will interest them enough to buy it. The writing is engaging and the subject matter interesting, but insight and importance are often secondary to humor.
53 IS THE NEW 38 provides a satisfyingly light-hearted look at life through the eyes of columnist, blogger, and healthcare consultant, Michael Turpin.
~IndieReader.