Still Alice by Lisa Genova

What a lovely day and a wonderful meeting for our August Timely & Timeless Book Club meeting at Downtown on the Square.  Though four of our members were absent and sorely missed, we had 8 articulate voices to discuss Still Alice by Lisa Genova. This work is a poignant look into the mysterious and devastating Alzheimer’s disease.  What was so wonderful about the book was the telling of Alice’s story from her eyes.  We were able to see from inside the disease - including her awareness and her reactions to the slow erosion of her mind’s inability to function at her “normal” level.  We were let into her strategies for dealing with the ever shifting sands of her abilities.  As I was reading I started dreading the final stages of what she would inevitably experience.  But Lisa Genova was kind to her character and to her readers by giving Alice’s story a dignified place to end. 

 

As this disease is now more correctly diagnosed than in prior times, early detection and current treatment plans have some modest effect on slowing the destruction of the connections needed to process, to understand and to verbalize language and to interact in the world these patients inhabit.  This book is also a bouquet of flowers to the families and friends who are trying to help their loved one(s).  Ms. Genova has installed perspective into each character’s place in the puzzle.  Each has a personal agenda to manage and to incorporate into Alice’s sadly altered life.

 

There was a great deal of tenderness and respect written into this work.  Lisa Genova has a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from Harvard University.  She has published three subsequent books dealing with deficits in brain function.  Still Alice was made into a major motion picture in which Julianne Moore received an Oscar for her portrayal of Alice. 

 

Our group shared some personal experiences with a friend or a loved one who is battling this disease.  We also discussed newer genetic testing that can predict Early Onset Alzheimer’s Disease (EOAD). 

 

Overall our group of eight rated Still Alice at a perfect 5.0/5.0.

 

 

 

For September, we are reading The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown.  We will meet at The Oriental Buffet at noon on Tuesday, September 27^th. 

 

From Goodreads.com:

 

Daniel James Brown’s robust book tells the story of the University of Washington’s 1936 eight-oar crew and their epic quest for an Olympic gold medal, a team that transformed the sport and grabbed the attention of millions of Americans. The sons of loggers, shipyard workers, and farmers, the boys defeated elite rivals first from eastern and British universities and finally the German crew rowing for Adolf Hitler in the Olympic Games in Berlin, 1936.

The emotional heart of the story lies with one rower, Joe Rantz, a teenager without family or prospects, who rows not for glory, but to regain his shattered self-regard and to find a place he can call home. The crew is assembled  by an enigmatic coach and mentored by a visionary, eccentric British boat builder, but it is their trust in each other that makes them a victorious team. They remind the country of what can be done when everyone quite literally pulls together—a perfect melding of commitment, determination, and optimism.