Every movie I watch now is a movie about an entire cast of people who seem to not have cancer, or at least this is, to me, its plot,” Anne Boyer observes in The Undying, her recent Pulitzer Prize-winning inquiry into cancer.

Language is failing Beryl Dusinbery. She is 99 years old and having trouble retrieving words. “One minute she has a word, then she hasn’t. Where does it go?” Conversely, Shimi Carmelli, 91, can’t forget.

In “Went to London, Took the Dog,” Nina Stibbe, author of “Love, Nina,” delivers a funny-sad portrait of midlife.