Two novels on aging

Two novels that I've read recently left me breathless.  One of our brilliant PhD students pointed me to The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey by Walter Mosley, and the second book I picked up was Emily, Alone by Stuart O'nan.  Here's Ptolemy Grey reviewed, to great effect, by the LA Times, and here is Emily, Alone reviewed in the New York Times, which apparently didn't review Mosley, despite his considerable stature.  Grr.

Read both books.  They squish up your heart and get deep into your blood.

One is a story about an 91 year-old black man in Los Angeles who takes an experimental drug knowing it will kill him but does it to be able to regain the cognitive ability he has lost due to dementia.  He does so to find out who killed the one person who kept him moored to the outside word--his grand-nephew Reggie. Amid the squalor and pain of Grey's life, the death provides him with a purpose and the means for his own much-desired exit.

Emily, Alone is a second novel about Emily Maxwell; I have not read the first, but I shall.  Emily is a white lady, country club member,  widow, an Indiana Republican, and much younger and healthier than Ptolemy Grey, but sharing in the gradual unmooring of her life as she faces the loss of her lifelong friend and the reality that she is the only one left who remembers 'the old days."

Both unbelievably good books by fine writers.