Still Alice features a 50-year old psychology professor from Harvard who has just been diagnosed with early on-set Alzheimer's. At first, Alice attributes her forgetfulness to getting older and possibly to menopause. But, when the symtoms begin to include forgetting people she has just met, an inability to recall words during her lectures (ironically on the acquisition of language), she knows something more is going on. Following her diagnosis, her husband - also a Harvard professor and scientist, finds it impossibly to accept and sets about to learn as much as he can about the disease and alternate possibilities. Given the genetic link to Alzheimer's, Alice's children as also faced with the possibility of facing a similar future and treat their mother with differing levels of support, denial, and encouragement. The majority of the book is told from the first person perspective of Alice. As her disease progresses, however, the book switches to the third person, as Alice becomes unable to tell her own story completely. Lisa Genova is herself a PhD in neuroscience from Harvard and has a tremendous grasp of the neuroscience and medicine behind Alzheimer's. One of the most touching actions, I found, was Alice's forming of a support group for others in her situation, after finding that all of the organized support at her hospital was for caregivers of Alzheimer's patients. This book has been criticized for its trite dialogue, but I think those reviews miss the point. This is the first fiction book I've ever read about this disease, and I felt it really highlighted for me the torture of going from a wholly independent person to one who knows they will slowly lose the ability to remember the faces and names of the people they love the most in the world. It is a heartbreaking and difficult disease - for those who suffer from it, and for those who take care of the people they love who can no longer remember them or trust their best intentions. While incredibly sad, Still Alice goes a long way in evoking sympathy and understanding for a very complicated and scary experience.
Saturday, June 20, 2009
Still Alice - Lisa Genova
Still Alice features a 50-year old psychology professor from Harvard who has just been diagnosed with early on-set Alzheimer's. At first, Alice attributes her forgetfulness to getting older and possibly to menopause. But, when the symtoms begin to include forgetting people she has just met, an inability to recall words during her lectures (ironically on the acquisition of language), she knows something more is going on. Following her diagnosis, her husband - also a Harvard professor and scientist, finds it impossibly to accept and sets about to learn as much as he can about the disease and alternate possibilities. Given the genetic link to Alzheimer's, Alice's children as also faced with the possibility of facing a similar future and treat their mother with differing levels of support, denial, and encouragement. The majority of the book is told from the first person perspective of Alice. As her disease progresses, however, the book switches to the third person, as Alice becomes unable to tell her own story completely. Lisa Genova is herself a PhD in neuroscience from Harvard and has a tremendous grasp of the neuroscience and medicine behind Alzheimer's. One of the most touching actions, I found, was Alice's forming of a support group for others in her situation, after finding that all of the organized support at her hospital was for caregivers of Alzheimer's patients. This book has been criticized for its trite dialogue, but I think those reviews miss the point. This is the first fiction book I've ever read about this disease, and I felt it really highlighted for me the torture of going from a wholly independent person to one who knows they will slowly lose the ability to remember the faces and names of the people they love the most in the world. It is a heartbreaking and difficult disease - for those who suffer from it, and for those who take care of the people they love who can no longer remember them or trust their best intentions. While incredibly sad, Still Alice goes a long way in evoking sympathy and understanding for a very complicated and scary experience.
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