BOOK REVIEW: Still Alice

Believe me; I have read some frightening books in my time. I enjoy a good horror story now and then. Author Lisa Genova has written a novel that truly scared me. STILL ALICE, simply put, hit too close to home.
 

World-renowned linguists and Harvard professor in the field of cognitive psychology, fifty year old Alice Howland is proud of the life she has worked so hard to build. She and her husband John, also a professor at Harvard, have raised three children and collaborated on a successful book in their field.

Now she has become forgetful and easily disoriented. An excellent lecturer, she has started having trouble finding the right word. She gets lost in her own neighborhood. When the diagnosis comes back that she is in the early stages of early-onset Alzheimer’s disease her life, her husband’s life and that of her son and two daughters change drastically.

Alice tells her own story which makes her loss of self even more touching. The reader becomes aware of changes that Alice does not notice. Early in the book, Alice attends a class, sits in a chair and waits for the professor to show. After the required fifteen minutes, she walks out. Only the class and the reader realize that Alice was supposed to have been the teacher. 
 

The reader also picks up on her family’s reaction to the changes in Alice. Her husband seems to be the one who will not accept the fact of Alzheimer’s. Her children each come to the reality in different ways, but each with his or her own type of love. Some of her colleagues start treating her as if she were contagious.

This is Lisa Genova’s first novel. Ms. Genova holds a doctorate in neuroscience from Harvard University and is an online columnist for the National Alzheimer’s Association. This background plus a great deal of personal interviews and research made this a realistic account of the effects of early-onset Alzheimer’s. This is not to take away from the fact that this is a good read. The fictional characters are believable; the situations touching; and the story line strong.

I only wish I had read STILL ALICE before I watched my mother decline with this frustrating disease. So many of the signs were there and we did not recognize them. 
 

This should be a book be on every required reading list.