Saturday, October 24, 2015

Still Alice by Lisa Genova

Still Alice by Lisa Genova

Dr. Alice Howland celebrates her 50th birthday and realizes she's not herself.  She's built her life on the study of language and words and suddenly her words are lost in everyday conversations.  Names and places escape her.  While out for a run one day, she can't find her way home, a route she's taken a thousand times before.  Alice tries to write these changes off to menopause but that is not the cause.  Alice is diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's disease.

Having recently turned 60, the topic of Still Alice scares me.  Every little ache and pain is cause for alarm. My memory is certainly not what it used to be and that just sucks.  I know too many people around my age who have suffered through physical or mental illness themselves or of a loved one.  The clock is ticking.  I usually have a positive outlook on life, but that 60th birthday threw me for a loop and I haven't recovered.  Still Alice made me think about what may lie ahead for me and my family.  I know that age is strictly a number and soon I'll be back to my youthful mindset.  But Alice didn't have that option and that made me sad.

Still Alice is a beautifully written and crafted novel.  The reader follows Alice step by step as the disease changes her. We see her triumphs and her failures.  We watch her husband and children try to come to grips with the changes in their lives too. Still Alice is difficult to read, her disease is a painful and heartbreaking one.  It's one that once we reach a certain age, we all fear will happen to us.  And that's probably the one thing about Alzheimer's that's normal, the angst that we all see in it.

I learned a lot from this book and the most important is that every human being that suffers from any form of dementia is still a person who lives.  Alice was Still Alice living a life full of hope, and for that I'm glad.




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