The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey

About this book

A masterful moving novel about age memory and family from one of the true literary icons of our time. Ptolemy Grey is ninety-one years old and has been all but forgotten-by his family his friends even himself-as he sinks into a lonely dementia. His grand-nephew Ptolemys only connection to the outside world was recently killed in a drive-by shooting and Ptolemy is too suspicious of anyone else to allow them into his life. until he meets Robyn his nieces seventeen-year-old lodger and the only one willing to take care of an old man at his grandnephews funeral. But Robyn will not tolerate Ptolemys hermitlike existence. She challenges him to interact more with the world around him and he grasps more firmly onto his disappearing consciousness. However this new activity pushes Ptolemy into the fold of a doctor touting an experimental drug that guarantees Ptolemy wont live to see age ninety- two but that hell spend his last days in feverish vigor and clarity. With his mind clear what Ptolemy finds-in his own past in his own apartment and in the circumstances surrounding his grand-nephews death-is shocking enough to spur an old man to action and to ensure a legacy that no one will forget. In The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey Mosley captures the compromised state of his protagonists mind with profound sensitivity and insight and creates an unforgettable pair of characters at the center of a novel that is sure to become a true contemporary classic.