How does Brooks address the theme of alienation in the novel, Being with Henry?

Much of Being with Henry has to do with alienation and the frustrations of both old age and of youth as they come together. While sixteen-year-old Laker desperately tries to find his independent place in the adult world, eighty-three-year-old Henry Olsen discovers that his adult independence is slowly being taken from him and that, in some ways, his daughter, Vera Lynne Sorenson, is treating him as if he were a dependent child again and she his parent.