Finished: 1/1/11
Walter Mosley is simply the best contemporary fiction writer we have seen in the past 20 years. His prose is magnificent and evokes a pathos that is both stunning and unpretentious. Not content to merely succeed with his numerous mystery series, including the brilliant novels featuring his latest detective Leonid McGill, Mosley takes the reader on a journey in his modern fiction endeavors.
'The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey' is a testament to the extraordinary way Mosley can take his readers to a world that can only exist within the recesses of the human spirit. The story itself is about a 91 year old man going through dementia, who meets a young woman who helps transform him from an old man lost in his own mind to a man who can clearly see the world around him through eyes that have seen almost a century of life. The story is reminiscent of Daniel Keyes' 'Flowers For Algernon', though not to such an extreme. It is more of a spiritual tale, in essence, as the aged Ptolemy Grey must look within himself to overcome past demons and fulfill near-forgotten promises of decades before.
Having read nearly every book Walter Mosley has penned, I can easily say that this ranks among the top 5 of his entire literary canon. It has all of Mosley's elements that have made him so successful, yet is a story that is fresh and both heartwarming and heartbreaking.
It is a book that will make you appreciate the beauty of life and the majesty of the human condition.
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