Non-Laughter Reviews: STILL ALICE

STILL ALICE
by Lisa Genova
Contemporary Fiction


Premise
Brilliant psycholinguistics professor develops early-onset Alzheimers disease.

Cover
Eyecatching blue butterfly-on-white-background design; is relevant to content.

What Works
This wonderful, heartbreaking novel is an astonishingly quick read. Partly because the reader urgently wants to know what happens next despite the clarity with which Alice goes downhill, partly because of the author's skill at deciding what was necessary for the story and paring everything else away. Every scene depicts something significant about how the heroine figures out something is wrong and deals with it, and every scene is free of padding. What remains is an amazing tale about the way Alice comes to terms with what is happening to her, and how those around her - spouse, children, friends, colleagues - react.

As in real life when a devastating diagnosis rips calm, orderly lives apart, not everyone demonstrates patience or support. Whether due to embarrassment, fear of own mortality, or personal grief, there are those who choose to withdraw so as not to deal with the stricken person, abandoning them to lonliness on top of all the other difficutlies enfolding their life. Alice's insistence on seeing herself as a person who happens to have Alzheimers, rather than primarily an Alzheimers patient, is a lesson readers would be able to apply to many other situations when interacting with people trying to wrest control of their lives back from intrusive and lethal companions.

What Doesn't
The only thing Apprentice Writer can think of is the real possibility that readers will cheat themselves of this book due to fear of upsetting subject matter. AW knows whereof she speaks; she would not have read this had it not been chosen by her book club. It is not a pretty thought to imagine not recognizing one's loved ones, not being competent to do one's job, not being able to carry out fundamental personal grooming. Trying to avoid such uncomfortable reality will do nothing to keep it away, however, if that is what is written in one's genetic future. What might help, on the other hand, is to learn from how others have dealt with the situation, and taking a page from their book about appreciating what one has while one has it.

Overall
A marvellous, non-preachy story meticulously researched and written by a neuroscientist. Remarkably, it manages to end on a hopeful note. Scads of discussion topics for book clubs. HIGHLY RECOMMEND