In a neat little nod to the often disparaging way older people are referenced (‘OK Boomer’, eye roll emoji), in Bloomer: Embracing a Late-Life Flourishing, Carol Lefevre adds that all-important ‘L’ to not only investigate how our 70s and beyond can be a time of growth rather than stagnation or wilting, but also, unsurprisingly, how the process can be viewed through the lens of extended gardening metaphors.
Lefevre is a gardener and a garden lover and sees a garden as “a piece of paradise worth cultivating”. The book’s prologue even begins with references to the Garden of Eden and how it’s only when Adam and Eve left this piece of paradise that they started to age.
For Lefevre, hitting the Biblical three-score and 10 and receiving a cancer diagnosis were the prompts for the creation of this book. The result includes some chapters previously published elsewhere, but remains a very cohesive whole in its wide-ranging ruminations on ageing – the practicalities of it, the fears of it and, importantly, the possibilities of it.
Bloomer covers dementia, perceived invisibility, assisted dying, homelessness, living at home in advanced years, bereavement, physical ailments and more. But if this sounds like a council pamphlet about the kinds of services available for our vulnerable senior citizens, be assured it’s not.
Lefevre writes with insight, curiosity, wisdom and compassion, guided by her garden and a profound appreciation of what a gift it is to age. When you approach later maturity with the foundational understanding that the alternative is death, then it is much easier to accept the Victor Hugo quote that Lefevre uses to kick off the book:
My body wanes, my mind waxes: in my old age there is a coming into flower.
Victor Hugo
Laced throughout Bloomer is a gentle clarion call (if that’s not a total oxymoron) for ageing to be treated differently and given some overdue respect. Lefevre isn’t the first to note that while it’s now so much less acceptable to exhibit racism, sexism or homophobia, for example, the world still feels perfectly entitled to belittle, ignore and make sweeping generalisations about the elderly.
Read: Book review: A Place Between Waking and Forgetting, Eugen Bacon
Perhaps the whole tenet of Bloomer can be summed up in this one extract she offers on page 49: “What, after all, is wrong with being old and saying so? To begin the process of reclaiming this word from the pejorative territory it currently occupies, old people need to start claiming their years with pride.”
Hear hear.
Bloomer, Carol Lefevre
Publisher: Affirm Press
ISBN: 978-1-923293-03-8
Format: Hardback
Pages: 288pp
Publication date: 25 March 2025
RRP: $34.99
