A Story To Tell
A Story To Tell
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February 17, 2022
Still Alice
Still Alice might be one of the more frightening books ever written. It’s about an enemy that attacks slowly, silently, without provocation, then maintains its bombardment until it has swallowed its victim completely, rendering its subject without hope, memory, and, eventually, without life.
The enemy is Alzheimer’s disease and in this book by Lisa Genova, Alzheimer’s apprehends a woman named Alice Howland, a brilliant college professor who is only fifty years old who, one day, suddenly can’t…remember…a…certain…
…
……….word……
…..then it finally comes back to her.
But this young, vibrant, woman, mother, wife, friend, colleague, has only begun to slide into a dark, frustrating, unforgiving abyss.
And while her diagnosis with Alzheimer’s is a shock it suddenly becomes predictable. Meaning, she knows, we all know, where it’s going. It barrels toward a cornfield of confusion. Not the story. Her brain. Her body. Alice’s world as she knows it. Alice’s mind as it has lived and was meant to be.
Genova takes on Alice’s passage by breaking the chapters down into months. Each month Alice gets worse. Her brain deteriorates further and further into a traitorous organ being kept alive by her body instead of driving her existence. But as Alice is diminished we, the reader, grow wiser. Genova, through Alice’s hell and her family’s struggle, teaches us about this cruel disease. Genova has done the research, she knows of what she writes from her own family’s experience. It’s a smart book about smart people ambushed by a nasty bitch of an illness.
Alice Howland’s mental slide seems especially cruel because she is so smart to begin with. We suspect Genova does this in part to demonstrate that Alzheimer’s can grab any brain, at any time. Alice’s prestige also aids the story because, being a Harvard professor, she has smoother access to the best doctors, health care coverage, and other support. We learn a lot about Alzheimer’s and the fight against it because Alice is in about as a good position to battle it as anyone can possibly be.
This does, however, take us to our lone small quibble with this fine book. We are certain that Genova has empathy for all families in the struggle with dementia in all places and across all socioeconomic lines but, like so many things, problems sometimes only really become problems when they happen to rich white people. You know what I mean? But maybe that’s Genova’s point, that if this jackal can bring down someone like Alice Howland, it can get us all.
Maybe we’re just tired of Boston.
Still Alice also has much to offer before it even gets started. Before Genova provides us the fictional timeline of the fictional (though very real) Alice Howland she takes us through the evolution of Still Alice as a book, from its self-publication and being sold out of the trunk of Genova’s car, to its best-seller status, its transformation into an Oscar-winning movie, and eventual ascent into the very fabric of the nation’s fight against Alzheimer’s.
This book is not just good. It’s important. And it’s inspirational to those fighting dementia. Or those dreaming of getting published.
What was that word that you cannot recall? Do you remember things as well as you used to? Names, places, dates, directions, faces, affection. We won’t spoil the end of Still Alice, though you likely know that Alzheimer’s does not yet have a cure. We can hint, though, that even the darkest depths of this cruel affliction cannot shroud a smile. Cannot silence love. --TK
Wednesday, February 23, 2022