At the age of 87, Diana Athill, then author of a novel, a short-story collection, and five memoirs, told her publisher, "Well, I've written my last book."

"I don't see why you say that," he said.

"I've got nothing left to write about," she said.

"Well," he said, "I would quite like to hear what you think about old age."

And she said, "Are you mad?"

The result of her publisher's suggestion is Somewhere Towards the End, a forthright and courageous look at what it means to get older, how to walk that delicate tightrope between accepting one's limitations realistically and challenging oneself to embrace inexorable changes with grace and even enthusiasm.

It was published the year she turned 91.

As a nonagenarian, Athill has a great deal to say about life, death, and everything in between. One of the hallmarks of this slim volume is her choice to face "the end" without religion or belief in an afterlife. Chapter 5 begins:

"So here I go into advanced old age, towards my inevitable and no longer distant end, without the 'support' of religion and having to face the prospect ahead in all its bald reality."
Rather than its being a frightening prospect, Athill appreciates the "ambiguity, the ingenuity, the humanity...of saying that the universe just happened to happen and that when we're dead we're dead."

Athill is honest about the guilt she felt when, at 70, she refused to trade her life and full-time career as a London editor for a full-time caretaking job with her 92-year-old mother. She writes candidly about her attempts to accommodate both, and how exhausted she became.

Another refreshingly frank section of the book speaks of her ebbing sex life and the astonishing discovery that without it, "other things became more interesting." She reviews a lifetime of lovers (she never married) that took her into her early 70s. Her last lover became her ongoing friend and live-in companion.

Although she is glad she never became a mother (the one time she became pregnant at age 43 and was ready to welcome a child into the world, she miscarried), she loves being around young people.

"What is so good about it is not just the affection young people inspire and how interesting their lives are to watch," she writes. "They also, just by being there, provide a useful counteraction to a disagreeable element in an old person's life. We tend to become convinced that everything is getting worse simply because within our own boundaries things are doing so."

Throughout her memoir (dare we call it her last? I hope not) Athill looks at old age through a lens of gentle humor, poking fun at herself and at the cultural icons that paint age with either too white or too black a brush. But mostly she is grateful for a "lucky" life. She acknowledges that others may have circumstances not so lucky, but she also points out the importance of an inner resilience that makes old age bearable, even enjoyable.

Above all, she underscores the value and uniqueness of each life lived to its fullest potential, its value living on long after the "worn-out container" of our bodies has slipped away.

Note: Diana Athill discusses her life and more views on aging in a YouTube video available at www.youtube.com/watch?v=Am1IPG5qZDc.