The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey, the latest novel by the prolific Walter Mosley, is one of the best books I’ve ever read — and I’ve read a lot of books, including those from a fair amount by dead white guys that everybody considers canon.
The book is not only well-written, but courageous. How many writers would dare to examine the life of a man in his 90’s, whose fading mind is just clear enough to understand that death is waiting for him — impatiently? I can’t really think of too many authors who let their characters get that old, unless their characters are wizards or vampires. Even John Updike killed off Rabbit Angstrom in the prime of life. And few authors who write about very old folks rarely display Mosley’s intense empathy. More, Ptolemy is a love story between this very old man and a young girl. Their love isn’t the least bit salacious or inappropriate, but real and moving and a thing of intergenerational beauty and value.
Ptolemy Grey lives in a run down part of Los Angeles in an apartment so squalid — think of Whoopi’s place in For Colored Girls, but much much worse — that when his new caretaker, Robyn, comes to muck it out, Mosley’s description of the vermin and filth almost give the reader hives. Robyn has been sent because Ptolemy’s great grandnephew — or maybe his great great grandnephew, such is the confusion when you’ve lived so long and have such an extended family — has been gunned down, like so many young black men, in what’s at first understood to be a drive-by.
At first he’s replaced by Hilly, who takes advantage of Ptolemy’s befuddlement to steal from him. It’s only when Robyn replaces this punk that everything changes for the better. Simply, Robyn, a ward of sorts of Ptolemy’s grandniece, gives the lonely and befuddled old man a reason to live. She not only cleans up his apartment, and cares for and defends him, but takes him to a doctor who peddles a wonder drug that returns Ptolemy’s memory to him, temporarily. The old man recognizes this man quite rightly as “Satan,” for the bargain is Faustian. The drug renders Ptolemy occasionally comatose and wracked with strange fevers, and will wear off or kill him, whichever comes first. But the revived memory brings with it a sense of purpose and responsibility that he’d long forgotten, and the deep, mostly Platonic love (they’re not above some innocent flirting) that grows between him and Robyn.
Mosley, as usual, is splendid with minor characters, like Melinda Hogarth, the woman who’s made a habit of mugging Ptolemy in broad daylight (Mosley does love his psychopaths, cf. Mouse Alexander and Hush, the nut du jour in his new Leonid McGill series); Nina, Reggie’s honey-voiced vixen of a widow; Coydog, the wise and crafty mentor from Ptolemy’s childhood; his neighbors and large family. The author also juxtaposes present day Los Angeles with Ptolemy’s restored memories of a childhood in the deep south, which are at once idyllic and horrific; he was a loved child who witnessed Coydog’s lynching. Robyn is just as well-drawn; she’s retained her loving heart and sense of honor despite having a sad past of her own.
The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey, dedicated to Mosley’s father and published after the death of Mosley’s mother, who also suffered from dementia, sizzles with life and love. It’s a great, great book.
