Vroege Recensenten

Ptolemy Grey is 91 years old and he has been all but forgotten--by his family, his friends, even himself, as he begins to sink into a lonely dementia, walled into an apartment that overflows with mementoes and treasures from his (long) past. The one grand-nephew, who would check in on Ptolemy, was recently killed in a drive-by shooting, and Ptolemy is too suspicious of anyone else to allow them into his house or his life. Until he meets Robin, a seventeen-year-old lodger of his niece's who's the only one willing to take care of an old man at his grand-nephew's funeral. But Robin won't tolerate the way Ptolemy has come to allow himself to live, skulking in and out of awareness barely long enough to cash his small pension checks, living in fear of his neighbors and even certain squalorous rooms in his apartment. Robin's challenges lead Ptolemy to interact more with the world around him, and to grasp more firmly onto his disappearing consciousness, but they also push him in an unexpected direction--into the fold of a doctor who's touting an experimental drug that will ensure that Ptolemy never lives to see 100, or even 92, but that he'll spend his last days in feverish vigor and clarity. Ptolemy calls the doctor the Devil, and he makes his Deal. With his mind clear, what Ptolemy finds--not just in his own past, and in his own apartment, but in his family's current state and the circumstances surrounding his grand-nephew's death--is shocking not just to those around him, but to Ptolemy himself. It's enough to spur an old man to action, to take care of business while he still can--and to ensure a legacy that no one will forget. In The Last Days of Ptolemy, Walter Mosley has constructed a short, powerful novel that draws both on his wisdom as a literary novelist and his storytelling skills as a mystery writer, crafting a book about an issue that affects--or will affect--us all, and that has the feel of a small classic that will sit well alongside the work of Ralph Ellison and James Baldwin.