Still Alice by Lisa Genova

A couple of years ago I happened upon the film version of Still Alice by Lisa Genova. At the time I didn't know it was based on a book, but the movie looked pretty good and I was trapped on a very long trans-Pacific flight so I gave it a go. It was so good, but an airplane full of people was not the best place to watch such a sad movie when you're a weeper like I am. When I found a copy of the book, I quickly added it to my rather tall stack of books-I'm-going-to-read-really-soon-but-not-yet. It sat in that pile until I finally dug it out from the bottom a few days ago.

Alice is a fifty-year-old professor of psychology at Harvard University, a wife, and the mother of three grown children. She is at what should be the peak of her career, but when she starts finding herself confused, disoriented, and losing her train of thought she fears something must be wrong. Assuming it to be a normal part of aging and menopause, Alice seeks out the doctor she's seen for years. When the diagnosis comes back as early-onset Alzheimer's disease, Alice is devastated. This seems like an impossibility at her age, but she learns that "ten percent of people with Alzheimer's have this early-onset form and are under the age of sixty-five." Even harder to accept is that this form of the disease is genetic and each of her children has a "fifty percent chance of inheriting this mutation, which has a one hundred percent chance of causing the disease."

Genova is herself a neuroscientist with a Ph.D. from Harvard and she spent a lot of time researching Alzheimer's and dementia so while this is a work of fiction, it is a truthful one. I learned so much I didn't know and couldn't help but think of how I would react in a similar situation. There are heartbreaking moments in this book ranging from the first time she finds herself disoriented a few blocks from home and unable to get there to the time she gets lost in her own home and cannot find the bathroom in time. There are also moments of love and tenderness from Alice's family and collogues that are the cause of their own tears.

Even though I went through a fair number of tissues, I really enjoyed this book. It was one I couldn't stop reading, even when the clock kept screaming at me that it was past my bedtime.