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A review by mazlietlotes
Still Alice by Lisa Genova
5.0
I don't have enough words. One of the most intense, painful, beautiful and human reading experiences I've ever had. This book pulled me in so much that I started to question my own reality. My senses went up like crazy and the world seemed a little less real right after reading the book - and the feeling lingered there for hours.
Still Alice offers an idea of what it's like to be inside a mind that's slowly losing all it's memories. And it's not fantasy, it's real and we can almost touch it. A brilliant, ambitious woman, a professor at Harvard is diagnosed with early Alzheimer's and we balance on the edge of sanity with an unreliable narrator at it's best. It was a slow start, but a necessary one for the road we're taking.
Self-awareness crumbles in our hands like a wet sand-pie, things lose their meaning as Alice loses more things. But then she comes back time and time again to surprise us with her intelligence even in the darkest of hours. Even when Alice can't remember her daughter's name and talks to her as if she's a stranger, or just peed her pants because she forgot where the toilet was. Even when Alice can't join the conversation because it's moving too fast for her to think of the words she could say. We pay attention when Alice can't and moments have meaning to us when they don't to her. And still, they are her experiences.
I have no idea how it feels to have Alzheimer's, and I think it's hard to pinpoint "the truth" in this interpretation of a life with the disease, simply because the people that could tell us all about it often can't - because they have Alzheimer's. But I do know how it feels to be human, and this was exactly it. Do I matter? Which parts of me matter? Do I exist without my memories? Who am I then? Who am I if I'm not the smartest? When am I ready to leave this life? When other people love me, what do they love? Can they still love me without me remembering them? Can I?
This is one of the toughest diseases. I don't remember ever crying like this for a book (and I'm a healthy crier, especially when touched by powerful fiction) - aftershocks of emotions making me shake even after I put the book away, even after I think I'm done crying. My eyes are sore and this book just joined my top eleven.
Still Alice offers an idea of what it's like to be inside a mind that's slowly losing all it's memories. And it's not fantasy, it's real and we can almost touch it. A brilliant, ambitious woman, a professor at Harvard is diagnosed with early Alzheimer's and we balance on the edge of sanity with an unreliable narrator at it's best. It was a slow start, but a necessary one for the road we're taking.
Self-awareness crumbles in our hands like a wet sand-pie, things lose their meaning as Alice loses more things. But then she comes back time and time again to surprise us with her intelligence even in the darkest of hours. Even when Alice can't remember her daughter's name and talks to her as if she's a stranger, or just peed her pants because she forgot where the toilet was. Even when Alice can't join the conversation because it's moving too fast for her to think of the words she could say. We pay attention when Alice can't and moments have meaning to us when they don't to her. And still, they are her experiences.
I have no idea how it feels to have Alzheimer's, and I think it's hard to pinpoint "the truth" in this interpretation of a life with the disease, simply because the people that could tell us all about it often can't - because they have Alzheimer's. But I do know how it feels to be human, and this was exactly it. Do I matter? Which parts of me matter? Do I exist without my memories? Who am I then? Who am I if I'm not the smartest? When am I ready to leave this life? When other people love me, what do they love? Can they still love me without me remembering them? Can I?
This is one of the toughest diseases. I don't remember ever crying like this for a book (and I'm a healthy crier, especially when touched by powerful fiction) - aftershocks of emotions making me shake even after I put the book away, even after I think I'm done crying. My eyes are sore and this book just joined my top eleven.