Still reeling...from reading this incredible novel...or rather gulping it down in two days. And for a moment there, I couldn't think of the word "reeling" and it freaked me out just a little.
Still Alice by Lisa Genova is the fictional story of Alice Howland, a Harvard professor of Linguistics who finds out, at the age of 50, that she has early-onset Alzheimers.
Not to make light of it, but as I was sitting on the couch writing my review, I decided I needed the book in front of me. So I went into my bedroom to get it where I left it on my nightstand when I finished it last night. The bed wasn't made, so I pulled the covers up and fluffed the pillows. Then I remembered I needed to put moisturizer on. I was walking out of the room when I suddenly stopped in the doorway and said to myself, "Wait a minute...why did I come in here? Oh, yeah. The book." That kind of stuff happens all the time. But imagine the terror if, in that scenario, you really couldn't remember. And as you made the bed, you wondered whose bed it was that you were making. And you put hair gel on your face instead of moisturizer. And when you sat back down with your computer, wondered who was writing the review of this book.
This is the kind of terror that eventually pervades Alice's life. It started with little things. She tried to attribute them to menopause, stress and too much multi-tasking. But one day she was running the regular route she had run for years around Harvard and suddenly found herself not knowing where she was, where her home was or where her office was. There were other incidents, like standing up to deliver a lecture she had been delivering to classes for years and not knowing what she was going to be talking about and meeting a colleague's wife and introducing herself to her five minutes later.
Alice's husband is a cancer researcher at Harvard. She has three adult children, Anna, Lydia and Tom. Alice's personal experiences, as well as the resulting family dynamics, are brilliantly told mostly from Alice's perspective. How long should she wait before seeing a doctor? Telling her husband? Telling her children? What about genetic testing? Would her children, especially Anna who is trying to conceive her first child, want to know if they had the gene? If their children might inherit it?
Alice's rapid decline, juxtaposed with her brilliant career in science, are at once painful and inspiring to read about. I found myself thinking about myself, my parents and my children, not in a macabre way, but in a practical way. I wonder if I would have the strength Alice had and the forethought to take some of the steps she did. I wonder if my mother would hide it from my father and us. I wonder if my children would want to know if they carried the gene.
As science continues to study this insidious and fatal disease, it's important that my generation reads books like this. It is certain that Alzheimer's is going to touch our lives in some way at some time...whether in ourselves, a parent, a relative or a friend's parent. How do we respond to the eventual breakdown of the very essence of someone's being?
Still Alice, which I think Amy recommended to me years ago, is a haunting, yet beautiful story that will touch you, hold onto you and stay with you.
Di
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