CULTURE AND DECLINE: AGE AWARENESS AND LIFE REVIEW Margaret Morganroth Gullette. Aged by Culture. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2004. 267 pp., pbk $18.50, ISBN 0 226 31062 0. Anita Brookner. The Next Big Thing. Viking, London, 2002. 247 pp., hbk £16.99, ISBN 9 780670 913022. Margaret Drabble. The Seven Sisters. Viking, London, 2002. 307 pp., hbk £16.99, ISBN 0 670 91335 0. Alan Sillitoe. Birthday. Flamingo, London, 2002. 249 pp., pbk £6.99, ISBN 0 00 710883 4. Louis Begley. About Schmidt. Serpent's Tail, London, 2003. 274 pp., pbk £8.99, ISBN 1 85242 843 0.

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Since the publication of her first book in 1988, Margaret Gullette has been a vigorous exponent of the view that the imaginative novels we read about ageing are an important cultural resource for making sense of the biological processes of growing older. Through the emphasis they choose to give to positive or to negative aspects of ageing and old age, authors can encourage and support the ageist tendencies in western culture, or alternatively can celebrate creativity and renewal in later life and, in so doing, make a potentially age-liberating contribution to the diminishment of prejudice against older people.