Still Alice: 10th Anniversary Target Book Club Edition

Still Alice This book is an incredible story of a very brilliant and talented woman's journey into the world of an Alzheimer's patient.It is written from the woman's point of view. I was able to read it with a close friend who has Alzheimer's and my friend was able to tell me what, in the book is true for her and what was not.The two of us had a very special experience of compassion and understanding that we would otherwise have not had.

In "Still Alice" it is uncanny how Lisa Genova gets everything right. Reading it was like reliving the adventure Jenny Knauss and I have had with AD since her diagnosis the first of April 2002. We have good friends who have written first person accounts of living with AD - Tracy Mobley, Charles Schnieder, and Richard Taylor - and those, and other, particular accounts are invaluable. Lisa has followed the path of fiction to create a more universal picture of AD. Here many morsels of AD are distilled into the life of one person - Alice - which makes a very potent brew. In fiction Lisa can artfully connect the lurches and crashes of AD and carry the reader along smoothly, but with a powerful driving force. Many a signature morsel of AD is blended so artfully that one doesn't realize that it is there until the taste is almost over - as it is in reality. And, there is a progressive point of view. Rather than treat people living with AD as victims who need help from the social workers dominating the AD establishment, we should treat Alice as still Alice still living her still real life. The speech by Alice (pages 249 to 252) to a fictional plenary symposium of the annual Alzheimer's Association Dementia Care Conference of 2005 is a manifesto for the progressive view that our approach to AD should be to help people living with AD enrich their lives and have fun. (Jenny made the same points in a conversation for a plenary symposium at the actual Dementia Care Conference in July 2005.) This book should be read not just by everyone embarking on an adventure with AD, but by everyone. It will give you the most potent and universal understanding of the AD experience, and it will motivate you to become a champion for the more progressive view of AD. I predict that this wonderful book will become a best seller because of praise by readers.