Walking with Beth by Merilyn Simonds

Reviewed by Wayne Ng

In Walking with Beth: Conversations with My Hundred-Year-Old Friend, Merilyn Simonds invites readers to slow down and walk alongside her and Beth (Elizabeth) Robinson, her neighbour and long-time friend, through three years of conversations starting at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic. The premise is deceptively simple: two women—one in her seventies, the other a centenarian—meet weekly to walk, talk, and reflect. Yet within that simplicity lies a deeply considered meditation on friendship, aging, mortality, and the meaning we build between ourselves and others over time.

The book resists easy categorization. It is neither a straightforward biography of Beth nor a conventional memoir by Simonds herself. Instead, it blends the two into something more fluid: a hybrid of personal essay, oral history, and philosophical vignette. Each chapter is titled with a single, resonant word: “Alone,” “Risk,” “Lament,” “Hollow,” etc. Like the walks that structure the narrative, the prose meanders, circles back, pauses, and sets off again. The effect is intimate and unhurried, inviting readers to inhabit the same rhythm as the walks themselves.

Beth Robinson is no ordinary centenarian. She is sharp-witted, independent, and unafraid to defy expectations. On her hundredth birthday, she buys herself a car. She dresses with flair, refusing to adopt the subdued wardrobe so often imposed on older women. She has lived in eight homes over 103 years, while Simonds, at seventy-three, has moved through dozens. This contrast between stability and restlessness, constancy and change, is one of the many threads woven subtly through their conversations.

The women’s rapport and trust are evident in their unspoken synchronicity. Simonds refers to Aristotle’s observation of friendship as holding a mirror to each other’s souls.

Alongside these portraits of Beth, Simonds offers a candid self-portrait, particularly in her reflections on mortality. She often speculates about the specifics of her final moments. These passages are striking in their honesty: “The future is no longer a glow in the distance. It hangs like a haze, a mist made up of questions. How will I live until the mist hardens into a door or a window? How will I die? When will I die?” Such thoughts might feel morbid in another context, but here they are tempered by the companionable presence of Beth and the grounding ritual of their walks.

Simond’s adaptations to aging are equally compelling. As her vision deteriorates, she learns to “see by colour and shape,” a practical adjustment that also serves as a metaphor for the reframing of perception that comes with age. Beth’s voice is present in the book, though it is always mediated through Simonds’ lens—an editorial choice that creates both intimacy and distance. Readers come to know Beth vividly, but some may wish to hear more directly from her.

Simonds is a Governor General’s Award finalist, so it is no surprise that her prose is at times breathtaking. She writes with polished literary precision honed over decades, balancing lyrical description with philosophical reflection. Quotations from Carl Jung, May Sarton, and Louise Glück are woven throughout, adding intellectual texture and anchoring her personal musings in a broader literary and philosophical tradition. These allusions will appeal to readers who enjoy intertextual depth.

The structure of the book, while fitting its theme, has both strengths and excusable limitations. The episodic, walk-based framework mirrors the ebb and flow of conversation, and its lack of a conventional arc reinforces the idea that friendship is not about climaxes but about the steady accumulation of shared experience. For reflective readers, this is a gift. For those who crave narrative propulsion, it may feel like free-range roaming. Certain motifs and conversational turns recur, producing a sense of repetition that could either comfort or frustrate, depending on the reader’s tolerance for such loops.

Where Walking with Beth is at its most quietly radical is in its portrayal of older women. In a literary landscape where women over eighty are often rendered invisible or flattened into caricature, Simonds and Beth are fully realized, dynamic individuals. Beth is witty, sensual, stubborn, private, and wise, but never romanticized. Simonds does not shy away from the physical realities of aging, nor does she allow those realities to define her friend entirely. This nuanced depiction is, in itself, an act of feminist resistance.

For readers who are grieving, navigating their own aging, or seeking literature that offers space for reflection, Walking with Beth will feel like a welcome companion. It does not offer the catharsis of a tightly plotted narrative, but it does offer something equally valuable: a sustained act of attention. In an age of constant distraction, the book reminds us that walking slowly beside someone, listening fully, and allowing them to change us is a rare, radical and welcome practice.

Walking with Beth is published by Random House.