Fiction Addiction

Do librarians know books? Yes! Check out the latest fiction reviews from an Indiana librarian!

Wednesday, June 09, 2010

Still Alice by Lisa Genova


Still Alice is one of those books that is almost painful to read but if you finish you will be glad that you did. This book deals with Alice, a 50 something, brilliant professor of Language at Harvard. She has a great family life and is respected in her profession. Alice finds out she does have one problem. A big one. She is diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's disease.
This might sound like a horribly sad story and yes there are elements of that in it. But that's not the whole story. Alice still manages to preserve her memory by writing down everything she needs to know on her Blackberry. The point is that she tries to keep going for as long as she can. Sadly this doesn't work forever and her gradual fading away is the tragic part of the story.
This book gives insight to what it's like to be an Alxheimer's patient or what the family of the patient goes through. The book though tragic has bright spots and is well worth the time spent reading it.