Regarding the three autobiographical narratives presented here about aging and dying, Friedrich Dürrenmatt wrote: "While reading this account, I no longer thought of any other writer. I only thought of Inoue. What moved me was how not only Inoue, his wife, and his children, but also his brothers, his sister, and his brother-in-law participate in the decay of age, how they perceive it without disempowering or abandoning the old woman, but with infinite reverence for the unwinding of a life... how they ponder when the old woman wanders through the rooms at night with a flashlight, whether she is searching for her son as a young woman or her mother as a small child, until they finally realize that they have all died for the old woman and that they are all someone else to her, strangers.".