At her worst, she is glib, offering up New Age style answers that have been stated often and better by others. Are we to take seriously her notion that one of the things required by a woman who spends time visiting her husband, who has been hospitalized with prostate cancer, are "comedy tapes for the car?"
The books ends as Sheehy quotes the guru Deepak Chopra, who urges that everyone should learn " . . . to accept your life . . . as a path of awakening." With the facile optimism that characterizes this book in its entirety, she then concludes, "If every day is an awakening, you will never grow old. You will just keep growing." But this promise is both cheap and empty. For as most people who have reached midlife can tell you, every day is not an awakening, nor would anyone have the psychic time or energy for this, not even in the most well-lived life.
