![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Book Blog: Still Alice by Lisa Genova
Feb. 6th, 2016 06:10 pmBack to the local library this week. The big library in the city is close to opening its brand new building, which looks like a cross between classical Greek architecture and a spiky tin can, but for the moment I have more limited offerings. As I've said before, the local library is heavy on crime fiction. Also some uncharacteristic offerings like this book.
It has a plug from Women's Weekly on the front but despite that, it's actually pretty good and rather creepy in the medical horror sense. The horror lies simply in the unfolding of the diagnosis of the main character, Harvard psychology professor Alice Howland, with early onset Alzheimers. She's only 50 and very smart, so for a while she's able to "get around" the roadblocks Alzheimers sets up in her brain, but over a couple of years, she gradually loses the battle. It's not a cheerful book but it's not completely devastating either, which one would sort of expect. Losing my marbles is a particular horror of mine; I imagine it is with a lot of people. I'm not sure about the ending with its message that she's "still Alice" and still understands love of her family. I wouldn't find that much of a comfort if I couldn't remember who they were.
I borrowed it because I'd read something else by the same author called Left Neglected, about someone with a particularly odd mental condition whereby the person's brain completely ignores any sensory messages from their left side. Their eyes work, but they don't see anything from that side, they eat from only one side of their plate, if asked to draw a clock, they will draw half of it. I think I enjoyed that book more, rather than this one where there could only be one ending.
It has a plug from Women's Weekly on the front but despite that, it's actually pretty good and rather creepy in the medical horror sense. The horror lies simply in the unfolding of the diagnosis of the main character, Harvard psychology professor Alice Howland, with early onset Alzheimers. She's only 50 and very smart, so for a while she's able to "get around" the roadblocks Alzheimers sets up in her brain, but over a couple of years, she gradually loses the battle. It's not a cheerful book but it's not completely devastating either, which one would sort of expect. Losing my marbles is a particular horror of mine; I imagine it is with a lot of people. I'm not sure about the ending with its message that she's "still Alice" and still understands love of her family. I wouldn't find that much of a comfort if I couldn't remember who they were.
I borrowed it because I'd read something else by the same author called Left Neglected, about someone with a particularly odd mental condition whereby the person's brain completely ignores any sensory messages from their left side. Their eyes work, but they don't see anything from that side, they eat from only one side of their plate, if asked to draw a clock, they will draw half of it. I think I enjoyed that book more, rather than this one where there could only be one ending.