Fridays with my Folks

Amal Awad investigates ageing in Australia from her perspective as an adult daughter grappling with a parent’s decline. She also includes expertise from health care professionals and lawmakers, and she interviews others in similar positions—retirees, those in aged-care facilities and people being cared for by family—documenting their struggles with genuine heart. What becomes clear in Awad’s research is society’s clear discomfort with ageing, and how it is framed as a failure in our youth-obsessed society. An admirable strength of Fridays With My Folks is the strong personal thread, which connects readers to Awad’s father, a Palestinian migrant and ambitious adventurer.

Melissa Cranenburgh, Bookseller + Publisher

Ageing, failing health and the looming reality of once-distant death are not exactly the most cheering of subjects, but Amal Awad makes it an engaging, reflective and salutary read. A snap-shot of things as they are now, and a personal, poignant tale.

Steven Carroll, Spectrum

From the first page of this beautifully written book, I was captivated by Amal’s raw and honest voice. Part memoir, part interviews, part manifesto - it’s a look at how we deal with aging in Australia in a whole new way. Anyone with aging parents (and even if you aren’t in that position) will be moved and given lots of food for thought here. These people and their stories will stay with you. There are some genuine laugh out loud moments and other moments that will squeeze your heart. I cried twice reading it and I think it’s such an important book for our times. I absolutely adored it!

Tess Woods

What gives this book its heft and power is not facts and figures but this blunt personal insight. It strikes me, powerfully.

Sharon Verghis, The Australian