by David Carlin and Peta Murray
Published in February, 2026 by Upswell
A braided memoir.
ADVANCE PRAISE
“This is a book of great contemplation. And the subject is profound. How do we imagine, control, live out, the last leg of our journey? It invites us into tricky and uncertain territory for sure, territory that usually makes us very nervous, that we mostly avoid. But this book invites one to plunge in. Carlin and Murray interweave their stories of ageing parents and ageing selves seamlessly, and without sentimentality. Their respective parents, Joan and Frank, are rendered with refreshing frankness, great humour and at times, acute sadness.”
—Patricia Cornelius, playwright
“How to Dress for Old Age blew my socks off - the interweaving of the narratives is deceptively simple, but so rich—revealing both narrators as ageing people and as carers of their much older parents. We hear a lot about the horrors of formal care, but this book illuminates the joys, obligations and frustrations of seeing a parent into residential aged care and providing the ‘informal care’ on which our creaky system relies.”
—Professor Sara Charlesworth, Chief Investigator, ARC Decent Work Good Care: International Approaches to Aged Care.
“With How to Dress for Old Age, Peta Murray and David Carlin perform a wondrous duet, evoking all the warmth, richness and beauty of their parents’ lives, and revealing the style in which they approach their own coda.”
—Rajith Savanadasa, novelist
“There is an art to ageing. And it’s in constant change. Where does grace and dignity fit in the picture of helping your parent into care? There is an art to looking at how much, or not, like them you are. An art to working out your newest life when everything has changed again. This tender and tough book asks when you should give up skateboarding and teases out what’s happened and what’s ahead.”
—Ponch Hawkes, photographer and artist
“The apprehension of senescence disclosed as duet memoir by two of Australia's finest writers, How to Dress for Old Age is a fitful, fretful, funny and finally necessary read for anyone old enough to laugh along nervously. Don't put it off any longer.”
—Alvin Pang, poet