CREATIVE LATE BLOOMERS HOLIDAY GIFT GUIDE: FIVE BOOKS TO CELEBRATE AGING

     Welcome all newcomers to Creative Late Bloomers. I hope you enjoy this blog dedicated to those souls who have found creative success late in life -- in their fifties, sixties, seventies, eighties and even nineties. For my already faithful followers who have been clamoring for their weekly fix of inspiration, I am happy to report that my profiles of creative late bloomers will resume right after the holidays. Promise. Meanwhile for those in need of immediate inspiration -- or for those who are looking for something late bloomerish to put under the tree this Christmas, here are my Five Top Books For Creative Late Bloomers.

                           -- Margo Hammond
                              creativelatebloomers@gmail.com
                                                                                     

1. THE GRANNY ALPHABET: PART I

 Abecedaries (those A-is-for-Apple-books I loved as a kid) are no longer just for children. British photog Tim Walker, famous for his extravagantly staged fashion shoots, has produced one that is truly grownup and deliciously surreal: The Granny Alphabet, published by Thames & Hudson. When I received my review copy, I was gobsmacked, as the British might say: Elderly models posing as the dearly beloved grannies of our imaginations. All the characters are "entirely fictitious," but we've met them all, from Annie with her cane, sensible black shoes and crocodile bag (a deadringer of Memere, my French grandmother-in-law) to Zelda with her plaid coat and walker (the British call it a Zimmer frame). Kit Hesketh-Harvey supplies clever verses for each letter. Here's the one for Y: Years fly, thinks Yvonne,/Youth flies, too./Yesterday, thinks Yvonne,/I was you.

2. THE GRANNY ALPHABET: PART II

     As if that wasn't enough, Walker offers a second volume in the twinset: another abecedaria, this time featuring drawings of little old ladies by English illustrator, designer and portrait painter Lawrence Mynott that begins "A is for Adventurous, B is for Batty, C is for Chic."

And here's the best part: Walker is donating all proceeds from the sale of The Granny Alphabet to Friends of the Elderly, an English organization that provides residential care, nursing care and dementia care for the elderly.

3. THE 100-YEAR-OLD MAN WHO CLIMBED OUT OF THE WINDOW AND DISAPPEARED

     As this rollicking novel opens, Allan Karlsson is stepping out of the first floor of his nursing home in his slippers to escape the tedious celebrations planned for his 100th birthday. While waiting for a bus to get out of town, Karlsson inadvertently steals a suitcase filled with cash owned by a gang of criminals, setting off a picaresque chase across Sweden. A Zelig-like character, Karlsson is not a stranger to adventures: He has had a lifetime of them, saving the lives of a slew of famous people in the process (not to mention inventing the atom bomb). Originally published in Swedish in 2009 and published in the U.S. by Hyperion Books at the end of last year, The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared is set to be released as a movie in Sweden on Christmas day. Penned by first-time Swedish novelist Jonas Jonasson, the novel has sold more than five million copies in 35 countries.


4.  HARRY LIPKIN,  PRIVATE EYE

     Harry Lipkin at 87 is the world's oldest private detective and star of this whodunit. Harry works out of Miami, carrying a Smith & Wesson snub-nose .38 in the glove compartment of his 40-year-old Chevy Impala, where he also keeps his dentures. This is not a crime novel that you read for the plot, which is lame. You read it for Harry who is one of the most unique characters you'll encounter anywhere. His creator, Barry Fantoni, was a cartoonist and wrote jokes for over 40 years for the British magazine Private Eye. 

5. THURSDAYS IN THE PARK

     Author Hilary Boyd is herself a creative late bloomer (see her Creative Late Bloomer profile at Hilary Boyd: Don't Call It Gran Lit ): In 2011 she published Thursdays in the Park when she was 60 after 20 years of rejection slips. The story she tells in Thursdays in the Park also has an it's-never-too-late theme. A 60-year-old woman in a sexless and unhappy marriage falls for a 60-something man she meets in the park where they both bring their grandchildren every Thursday. The novel became an international bestseller last year when it appeared as an e-book (in Britain, it even outsold Fifty Shades of Grey). The Brits called it Gran Lit, a term Boyd roundly rejects. And no wonder. Her protaganist is no "white-bun, baggy-cardie, specs-toting granny," she insists. Well, she's a granny but a sexy one who learns that it's never too late even for sex. On a roll, Boyd this year published two more novels -- Tangled Lives in February and When You Walked Back Into My Life in October. Tangled Lives is about a woman with three grown children who harbors a secret: At 18 she gave up a baby boy for adoption and now her son wants to make contact. When You Walked Back Into My Life tells the story of a love affair that falls apart and may or may not get rekindled years later.

THE TACO BELL SUPER BOWL AD & A SWEDISH CENTENARIAN: THROWING AGING STEREOTYPES OUT THE WINDOW

      The seniors who snuck out of their nursing homes for a wild night on the town in the Taco Bell commercial aired during this year's Super Bowl are professional actors, but the "octogenarian party animals" didn't have to fake their bad behavior. It "came naturally," Ernie Misko and Beverly Polcyn told CNN's Soledad O'Brien & company in this clip I found at Post 50.

     "We're no stick-in-the-mud people," said Polcyn. Was it difficult to shoot the scene where the seniors were making out in a bathroom stall? A piece a cake, according to Polcyn: "We've had some experience," she said batting her eyelashes.

      Even the idea of a nursing home escape wasn't that much of a stretch. There have been several real-life accounts of nursing home residents attempting to spring themselves from lockdown. Last year an 86-year-old pensioner fled from his residential care home in Ancona, Italy in the middle of the night -- in his electric wheelchair. When the police found him two hours later trying to drive down a busy motorway, he told the officers that he left because the home was "full of old people. I could not stand it any more...I may have lost my mobility but I have not lost my nerve and my sense of adventure." 

     Not all the real-life nursing home escapes though ended up as gleefully as it did for the wild and crazy bunch partying at a Taco Bell. In 2011, a Chicago man fell 10 to 20 feet to his death after he tried to slide down the sheets he had tied together and flung outside his nursing home window.

      Other fictional escapees, on the other hand, have fared much better. In The Great Nursing Home Escape, a motley group -- including a retired military man, a grouchy lady who used to work at the Department of Motor Vehicles, a talkative gossip, a former cheerleader, a Casanova and a "shy, sweet old gal" -- join forces and plot to leave their dreary nursing home behind and recapture their youth. The one-act comedy, written by Nathan Harswick, bills itself as "funny and heartwarming." A 2007 movie short promises much of the same. Written and directed by Jeremy Dehn (who also plays one of the minor characters), it's described as "a crotchety old comedy." It's title? The Grayed Escape. Ouch.

   
     My award for the most entertaining nursing home escapee tale goes to The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared. The author of that novel -- Jonas Jonasson, a former Swedish journalist and media consultant --  throws the prevailing stereotype that all Swedish novels are dark and brooding right out the window along with his charming protagonist, centenarian Allan Karlsson. The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared does involve several deaths, but they are all more or less accidental. And besides, those who are killed, as Arnold Schwarzenegger famously said in "True Lies," are all baaaad.

     Happily, Jonasson also throws out aging stereotypes as Allan Karlsson escapes via the window of his first-floor room at the Old Folks' Home. The home is just about to throw him a party for his 100th birthday and Karlsson can't bear the idea of celebrating without his beloved vodka, forbidden to him by the home's director, the bad-tempered Alice. The story of how he subsequently gets involved with Russian mobsters, a hot dog stand vendor and an elephant is highly entertaining, to say the least.

Swedish writer Jonas Jonasson (photo by A. Savin)

     Of course, it helps that Jonasson gives his escapee a colorful backstory, which he offers up throughout the novel in flashbacks. Karlsson rivals both Zelig and Forrest Gump combined in his uncanny ability to stumble into history, crossing paths with the likes of Franco, Truman, Churchill, Stalin and Mao. All thanks to his lifelong pursuit of a good meal and a glass of vodka. No wonder he's made it to the ripe old age of 100.

    The Swedes are making a movie out of The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared. The book was a bestseller in Sweden in 2010 and has sold more than 3 million copies worldwide. Hyperion Books published it in the United States last September.  And with the American penchant for remaking Swedish movies (see The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and Let the Right One In), no doubt there will also be a U.S. version of Allan Karlsson's escapades. I hope so. I know some actors who will be first in line for the casting call.