Author Aphrodite Phoenix is a young-looking grandma. She's into healthy living, and it's working. Her true age, when told, is amazing.

But she also radiates the understanding you'd expect from someone who remembers exactly where she was the day JFK was gunned down. Or from the mother of a filmmaker who ran south with his camera to the mass grave in lower Manhattan, on that morning. Or from the grandmother of the babies of a crackhead.

Phoenix has been around.

She's been a desperately poor single mother, and then a thriving but persecuted sex worker.

Her cheekbone has been fractured by a husband. Her trust has been betrayed by a lover. Members of her family have abused her. Professional liars have tricked her.

But all of that has only been a hiccup.

Because Phoenix lost her mother when she was a child, and then she lost her child as a mother.

It's all here, from this vibrant, ever bold Sixties Child with the will to stay upbeat and loving. Her narratives will move anyone, no matter what age, to say:

If she still loves life, then I can.