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STILL ALICE
By Kevin Myers | Wednesday,
March 12, 2014 - Off the Shelf
As our national population ages and we all start thinking about
our elders and their mortality, we might also start thinking about unpleasant
illnesses and decisions. But in Still Alice, the titular protagonist
is an otherwise healthy, fifty-year-old Harvard professor who is diagnosed
with early-onset Alzheimer’s. Alice struggles both to understand her terminal
illness and to maintain her crumbling brain. As she slides into dementia long
before one would expect in her life, we see how frightening it can be to claw
back to sanity from the inevitable chasm of mindlessness.
I picked up this book because I thought, “Wow . . . Someone
actually wrote about how it feels to lose your mind.” My grandfather had had
Alzheimer’s, and I often wondered how he felt about it when he was alive. I
wish I had asked, because it seems like this books lays it all out. It’s
terrifying to see how Alice can be perfectly rational one minute and raving
the next about something as mundane as answering a phone, or why the front
door is located in the middle of the living room. This story made me cringe;
it made me sob with recognition; and I came away wanting to learn more about
the disease and able to empathize with those who are living with Alzheimer’s.
The book has already been adapted into a powerful play. But for
as much help and awareness that visualizations like movies and theater can
give, there’s nothing like really feeling this story through the
carefully documented lists Alice creates to confirm her own sanity. The whole
book is unsettling, and it’s a bit unpleasant sometimes, but there are a few
scenes that are incredibly tender and sweet.
I always recommend this book to anyone who asks me for a book
that makes me sad. Now, I don’t react to books the same way I react to other
media. Books don’t scare me or make me cry, and I can count on one hand the
number of books that have done both. This is at the top of my list.
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Former leading New Zealand publisher and bookseller, and widely experienced judge of both the Commonwealth Writers Prize and the Montana New Zealand Book Awards, talks about what he is currently reading, what impresses him and what doesn't, along with chat about the international English language book scene, and links to sites of interest to booklovers.
Thursday, March 13, 2014
Lisa Genova's 2009 Debut Novel is Still Heart-Wrenching
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