What do you think?
Taking Leave
Book by Nagle Jackson
57 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 2000
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
August 23, 2015
The idiot who wrote the back cover copy tells readers that the character Eliot has early stage Alzheimer's disease. I was an Alzhemier's researcher. If he has Alzheimer's, it is very late stage.
The reason I imply doubt on Eliot's diagnosis is that I have never seen an AD patient with this degree of impairment. It is as if he has all the scariest late-stage AD problems at the same time. I can't say that no AD patients has ever been as severe and constantly severe as Eliot, but I have never seen it. Struggling to find the right word is a real problem for patients, but I have never seen anybody express the struggle the way that Eliot does.
All this is to say that I find too much of this narrative preposterous, and therefore I do not find it dramatically compelling. The gathering of the children to make a decision about putting Eliot in a home has dramatic potential, but I found that switching the narrative between Eliot's behavior and the family discussion did not serve the pace of the story or its dramatic impact. The story just inched along with too many repetitive scenes before the inevitable-seeming surprise ending. I hope you are smart enough to see it coming.
This is especially surprising and disappointing because of the very Tom Stoppardesque idea of making Eliot a KING LEAR scholar and building parallels between Eliot's life and his relationships with his three daughters. This play should resonate with ideas that parallel and tellingly contrast to Shakespeare's play. One can make a short list of such resonances, but they are few and obvious. Stoppard would have dazzled you. Mr. Jackson fails to.
The reason I imply doubt on Eliot's diagnosis is that I have never seen an AD patient with this degree of impairment. It is as if he has all the scariest late-stage AD problems at the same time. I can't say that no AD patients has ever been as severe and constantly severe as Eliot, but I have never seen it. Struggling to find the right word is a real problem for patients, but I have never seen anybody express the struggle the way that Eliot does.
All this is to say that I find too much of this narrative preposterous, and therefore I do not find it dramatically compelling. The gathering of the children to make a decision about putting Eliot in a home has dramatic potential, but I found that switching the narrative between Eliot's behavior and the family discussion did not serve the pace of the story or its dramatic impact. The story just inched along with too many repetitive scenes before the inevitable-seeming surprise ending. I hope you are smart enough to see it coming.
This is especially surprising and disappointing because of the very Tom Stoppardesque idea of making Eliot a KING LEAR scholar and building parallels between Eliot's life and his relationships with his three daughters. This play should resonate with ideas that parallel and tellingly contrast to Shakespeare's play. One can make a short list of such resonances, but they are few and obvious. Stoppard would have dazzled you. Mr. Jackson fails to.
June 10, 2021
Highly depressing play about someone who is in the late stages of Alzheimer's and how his family deals with it.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews