This 'n That

I've read so many books over the past 10 days that I scarcely know where to begin. On the plane going up to Massachusetts it was my latest offering from Library Journal, Philip Roth's The Humbling. You know, of course, that I can't say anything about it til the review which I sent in Weds. is printed in LJ. Suffice it to say, I read it between here and Charlotte!
Here I had thought I had made the big time when I received Richard Russo's That Old Cape Magic (which I also can't tell you about yet, or then I'd have to kill you!)

On the return flight it was Still Alice by Lisa Genova which so many of our customers had recommended. Readers sure are gluttons for punishment, aren't we? That was one of the most terrifying books I've ever delved into. If you know me, and now even if you didn't, I can tell you that I could be prone to massive hypochondria. So, did I really need to read this book about a 50 year old neurologist who begins to detect problems with her memory (she gets lost jogging home in Cambridge) and motor skills?

With access to the best that Harvard has to offer, since she and her husband John teach there, it isn't long before Alice is diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's disease. The disturbing part for me was that I didn't fare much better than Alice did on the tests used to determine the extent of advancement of her disease!

This is an absolutely devastating book on so many levels and yet, as seems to happen in literature and life, Alice's children, especially her daughter Lydia with whom she had a testy relationship, dig deep, becoming better, more compassionate and loving people than they might have. Alice's background and education (similar to the author's by the way) help her cope for a while as she devises clever ways to outsmart the disease and fool co-workers and friends.
Realistic and admirable was her plan to stockpile sleeping pills and create a simple memory test for herself so she would be able to accomplish a clean suicide before the ability was taken from her hands.

Still Alice is a beautifully written, realistic look at what happens to a family when faced with unexpected, overwhelming obstacles. How a person faces death says so much about them. My dad taught me that. But, when death is slow to arrive and one loses their mental faculties along the way, the road becomes so much more complicated for the family. In one heartbreaking scene, Alice and her husband, who I think keeps trying to convince himself that if he just ignores this it will all go away, have decided to spend the summer at their beach house on the Cape, hoping the change of scene would be healing. With Alzheimer's that isn't the case and Alice, unable to remember where the bathroom is, panics and simply wets her pants in the living room. A Harvard professor of neurology, fifty years old, is humiliated and broken when least expecting it - as I said, a terrifying book.

To keep my mind off the sure knowledge that I likely have Alzheimer's too, I also took along a cd book for the one hour ride from the airport to the cottage in the woods in Otis. Michael Connelly's Scarecrow was just the ticket! Nothing like perverted sexual mutilation and murder, not to mention identity theft and computer fraud, to help you forget what you forgot!