Still Alice

by Lisa Genova

A moving story of a woman with early onset Alzheimer's disease, now a major Academy Award-winning film starring Julianne Moore and Kristen Stewart.

Alice Howland is proud of the life she worked so hard to build. At fifty, she's a cognitive psychology professor at Harvard and a renowned expert in linguistics, with a successful husband and three grown children. When she begins to grow forgetful and disoriented, she dismisses it for as long as she can until a tragic diagnosis changes her life - and her relationship with her family and the world around her - for ever.

Unable to care for herself, Alice struggles to find meaning and purpose as her concept of self gradually slips away. But Alice is a remarkable woman, and her family learn more about her and each other in their quest to hold on to the Alice they know. Her memory hanging by a frayed thread, she is living in the moment, living for each day. But she is still Alice.

• ISBN10: 1471140822
• ISBN13: 9781471140822
• Publish Date: 26 February 2015 (first published 1 July 2007)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: GB
• Imprint: Simon & Schuster Ltd
• Edition: Film Tie-In
• Format: Paperback
• Pages: 384
• Language: English

Reviews

[tylerrosereads]

3.5 stars.
My heart hurts but I knew it would.

4.5 stars

"Her mother had comforted her and told her not to be sad for the butterflies, that just because their lives were short didn't mean they were tragic."

It's going to be difficult to articulate my feeling for Still Alice into words, but I'm definitely going to try.

Alice Howland is a brilliant professor of Psychology at Harvard University, a wife and a mother of three children. At the age of fifty she is diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's Disease and we get to see how this disease affects Alice. Reading about Alice's rapid deterioration from a smart and independent woman to a shell of her former self is extremely emotional.

Still Alice is a terrifying book. It deals with the early onset of Alzheimer's Disease, a disease that I have never given much thought to because:
1)It's a disease that I associated with age.
2)It's a disease that scares me in a way that no other does. My mind, memories and cognitive abilities make me who I am and allow me to be free and independent. I can't imagine losing that.

When Alice starts forgetting little things such as words on the tip of her tongue and where she put things (little things that I do everyday single day and I'm sure many of you do too), she doesn't chalk it up to Alzheimer's disease. She thinks it could be menopause or depression, but then while on a run, she forgets where she is even although she's lived in that same area for more than half of her life and we realise that she is facing something extremely serious. Lisa Genova did her research and uses her degree in neuroscience to show the extremely realistic symptoms of the Alzheimer's disease that affects Alice. I learnt a lot about Alzheimer's disease, not only on an informative level, but also on an extremely emotional level.

Still Alice doesn't only deal with Alice's reaction to her Alzheimer's and the manner in which the disease affects her, but it also shows how Alice's family cope with it. Alice's children could be affected with the Alzheimer's disease gene and while two of her children decide to get tested for it, one of them doesn't and their choices and how this disease affects them is also shown. The relationship between Alice and her husband, after she's diagnosed with Alzheimer's, is extremely heartbreaking to read about, but it's also extremely realistic. At first her husband, John, is in denial and then he starts to distance himself because he's losing the woman that he loved. Even although I didn't agree with his reactions, I understood where he was coming from and why he acted in the manner that he did. Alice's relationship with her children become stronger, especially her relationship with her daughter Lydia, whom she was a little estranged from, and seeing their relationship grow and develop was beautiful to read about.

While this book impacted me on an emotional level - my eyes started watering and I was close to crying - there are two things that I can't ignore when I look at Still Alice critically. While the writing in Still Alice provides an insight into Alzheimer's disease, it is dense, random and choppy. The second thing is a personal criticism. I didn't expect this book to end happily and I knew that the ending was going to be brutal, but the ending felt incomplete and unsatisfying. I can't really explain why I feel this way, I just do.

Still Alice is an extremely important book that deals with Alzheimer's disease not only on an informative level, but also on an emotional level. Even although the writing might have felt dense at times and I wasn't satisfied with the ending, Still Alice is tragic, heartbreaking, but full of hope and love.

"My yesterdays are disappearing and my tomorrows are uncertain, so what do I live for? I live for each day. I live in the moment." (Alice Howland)

[lovelybookshelf]

"Still Alice" is the fictional story of Alice Howland, a Harvard professor of psychology who is diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's. The book was absolutely fascinating, wonderfully written... but it was such a difficult read, emotionally. The story is told from Alice's point of view, the view of the person enduring Alzheimer's. Her struggles, her fears, her loneliness and frustration - everything Alice experienced completely enveloped me.

Genova takes readers through so many emotions, helping us feel how complex dealing with this disease must feel to the patients and their caregivers. I laughed when Alice ordered ice cream: "'I'll have a triple-scoop Peanut Butter Cup in a cone, please.' Hell, I'm on Lipitor." I felt angry that her husband would leave her alone in the house for long periods of time, or when her daughter said, "She should try to recall the information on her own and not get lazy." Some of the scenes I found most profound were in the earlier stages, when Alice slipped in and out of confusion, aware of what was happening to her yet unable to control it, and acutely feeling the grief or humiliation that followed.

My husband asked me, "Why do you read books like that?" Fair enough; many parts of the story brought me to tears. I thought about two moments in the book. The first was Alice's realization that many of her friends and colleagues were uncomfortable around her. They wouldn't make eye contact with her, or they'd avoid her altogether. The second was later in the story, when Alice is listening to her family argue: "They talked about her as if she weren't sitting in the wing chair, a few feet away. They talked about her, in front of her, as if she were deaf. They talked about her, in front of her, without including her, as if she had Alzheimer's disease."

Because of my hospice volunteering training and limited interaction with people who have Alzheimer's, I thought I knew a good bit about this disease. I don't believe I'd ever really internalized what I'd learned, how it must feel to the patient, until reading this book. Yes, the content is difficult and often terrifying. But novels like Still Alice foster deeper insight, understanding, and a more human connection.

[boghunden]

So happy I bought this book. It's a very beautiful story, but also sad. You will need Kleenex.

[Terri M. LeBlanc]

This book was very moving and well-written. The author did a great job at showing the progression of the disease through descriptions and in the way the book was written. Keep the Kleenexes handy and don't ready in a public place. It will make you tear up!