Starting with affirmative postmodernism and the necessity of an ironic stance, this book is not recommended for the faint-hearted. It repays reading nonetheless, for a number of reasons. The main one is that it explores the commonplace activity of reading which, after all, is what we still spend much time over. Metaphors associated with reading abound in gerontology and social science, with stories, characters and chapters used to convey ways of ‘reading’ the world. Literary allusions may be playful as much as ironic, I think, and a certain lightness of touch by the authors helps break down some rather indigestible tracks. Novels and their novelty are mentioned, so too the pervasiveness of soap operas and their eventual endings.

Despite the ubiquity of reading in many cultures, the authors argue that there are differences between a literary and a lived text, you can only go so far with a sheaf of metaphors. Chapter 2 of the book discusses the ‘autobiographical self’, concluding that life may have the qualities of a novel. It is easy to get a little lost down ‘metaphor lane’, with discussions of a character or the reader … but a strong feature of this book is its self-editing. Just as discussion begins to drift, we are back with a summary, setting us back on the authors' path. There are areas where the conversational style of this book prompts rights of reply. Can it really still be so that gerontology remains so imbalanced, with a narrow focus on the problems of later life? Recent issues of this journal do not seem to confirm this, although policy and political discourses in the developed world seem to be rediscovering the ‘demographic time bomb’.

This is all part of certain narratives, of course. The theme of narrative is central to the discussion of several chapters. First, personal experience by way of autobiography is explored (Part One). This is followed by discussion of narrative development in Part Two. Similarly, the exploration of poetics is central to Part One; and their application to Part Two. This focus on application in later life is because the authors hold that during this time the self is both ‘under attack’ and that a calm period of ‘sorting out’ the meaning of life is not generally attainable, or even desirable. Later life is a time of ‘changing bodies’, ‘changing worlds’, ‘changing minds’, as the authors note, although the ‘thinning’ of the life plot may not be experienced by all. This leads to personal introspection about identity in later life; or rather its continuance or re-emergence. My reading of texts around later life suggests that there is much in common with other parts of the lifecourse in searches for identity: the teenage complaint of ‘who am I?’, the new mother's observations of her ‘changed’ identity.

Death features in this text, as it must, although not all books about later life step into this area. The authors' concluding comments that the ‘story’ of a life is ironic need to be set in the context of their meaning that this involves untidiness, uncertainty and ‘positive befuddlement’. This text has the potential to inform our reading of our own lives, and adds to the ‘toolkit’ of gerontologists by asking us to think more critically about reading, while reading.