Still Alice, Lisa Genova

Candice Bohannon Reyes, Dementia, 2009 (?)

(August 15)  Quite liked it. Read it because, when I mentioned to Andrea that The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time made me wonder if I had Asperger's Syndrome, it reminded her of Still Alice, which made her think she might have Alzheimer Disease. Like Curious Incident, this is written from the point of view of the person with the condition... which is such an interesting challenge in both books: since neither author actually has the condition they present from the protagonist's point of view they can't claim complete authenticity, but they know enough about the condition to try for near-authenticity (Haddon had worked with people with autism and Genova is a doctor who has treated people with Alzheimer).

Basically, it's interesting to see what narrative techniques get used to convey disassociation, obsession, superstitiousness, etc. (Curious), or memory lapses, cognitive confusion, disintegration, etc. (Alice).

And I really enjoyed what Lisa Genova tries here. It's a clinical case (but totally fictionalized) so there is no big dramatic arc -- Alice just finds out she's got early-onset Alzheimer's and tries to cope with it as it progresses. And yet the story is as compelling as any proper “heroic” drama. You want to know what happens next as this disease develops. The tension mounts: at only halfway through the novel, it seems Alice has already lost so much... how much worse would it get? you wonder. And Alice early on tries to provide herself with an escape hatch, something I think I would try to do myself; it was gripping to watch that play out.

So Genova successfully persuaded me that the early stages of dementia would be as she presents them.

And, yes, it did make me feel I might have early symptoms of Alzheimer's in real life. Did Andrea and I get this impression because we all do have some symptoms of dementia by a certain age, or because Genova wants us to see how easy it is to deny the symptoms?