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Still Alice

Lisa Genova

Start date: June 1, 2017

Finish date: June 30, 2017

Discussion: Monthly Bonus Reads

Why we're reading this: June Bonus Read- Alzheimer's and Brain Awareness Month

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Still Alice by Lisa Genova

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May 28, 2017 Jeanne rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: read-women, psychology, read-2017

Still Alice, by Lisa Genova, is a quick read, but surprisingly insightful about the experiences of people with Alzheimer's Disease – and their partners, families, caregivers, and co-workers.

Told from Alice's point of view (she's a psychology professor at Harvard), Still Alice offers a fresh perspective of this disease. Alice's behavior often makes sense when told this way – although her family and coworkers still have a difficult time understanding her behavior. Genova presents Alice as a woman Still Alice, by Lisa Genova, is a quick read, but surprisingly insightful about the experiences of people with Alzheimer's Disease – and their partners, families, caregivers, and co-workers.

Told from Alice's point of view (she's a psychology professor at Harvard), Still Alice offers a fresh perspective of this disease. Alice's behavior often makes sense when told this way – although her family and coworkers still have a difficult time understanding her behavior. Genova presents Alice as a woman who had and continues to have strengths even during her illness. She is not a hollow shell, although people often talk about her in her presence, as though she is a nonperson, even when she was still competent to make her own decisions. Her family members were not perfect, but they often have good intentions. In fact, in some cases, her diagnosis is a blessing in disguise, allowing one relationship to deepen and heal.

Because Still Alice followed Alice over the first two years of her illness, we can see the variability of the disease – and its rapid progression. We can also recognize the difficulties some people have with the disease, their struggles in responding to her symptomatic behaviors, and strategies for handling symptoms and problems more effectively.

In some ways Genova's task is unusually easy with Alice. Alice pays attention to the lapses she has, takes them seriously, and asks for a diagnosis fairly early. Alice's PCP takes her concerns seriously and easily excludes the other potential causes of memory problems in 50-year-olds – normal lapses, poor sleep hygiene, substance abuse, stress, menopause, strokes, tumors, AIDS, etc. – and makes a referral to a neurologist and neuropsychologist at their first discussion of problems, rather than six months later. Despite few errors, Alice is diagnosed, correctly as it turns out, with Early Onset Alzheimer's Disease. This gives Still Alice a more rapid and clear path than it would have if it followed a more typical person's long and arduous journey before finally receiving a diagnosis.

Genova has a PhD in neuropsychology from Harvard, so her occasional misses surprised me. Alice's to do list months before being first diagnosed was surprisingly short for someone at her stage in her career: "Cognition class, lunch seminar, Dan’s paper, Eric, Birthday dinner" (p. 29).
Perhaps this was just her acute to do list, but mine is much longer and more complicated. At one point early in the progression of the disease Alice referred to her medications as "antioxidant vitamins and aspirin, a statin, and two neurotransmitter drugs” (p. 105). It seems that Alice would never have described her medications as "neurotransmitter drugs," even when she was trying to explain her diagnosis and treatment to her daughter.

Still, Genova offered a good perspective on the process of diagnosis – MRI only to rule out a stroke or tumors – and focused on elegant neuropsychological assessments. Alice's repeated visits for neuropsychological testing allowed us to see the importance of such testing and understand her progressive loss of new information – and older information.

In her author's interview, Genova identified Oliver Sacks as one of her favorite writers. Genova's descriptions of neurological disorders are less compelling than Sacks', who often took philosophical flights with his descriptions. Genova, though, provides a good and thorough strength-based approach to this disease. This is a real gift to the Alzheimer's community: patients, families, caregivers, health-care providers.

While I hope that I have no reason to pass this book along, it will be at my fingertips – right next to the neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor's memoir, My Stroke of Insight, which described Taylor's experience of and recovery from a stroke. Both books can help patients and families through a confusing time. ...more

7 likes · Like · see review

Oct 21, 2017 Cathie rated it liked it

Shelves: 2017-reads, fiction, contemporary, psychology, book-addicts-botm, own-tbr, medical, you-ll-love-this-botm, love-of-reading-botm, 1001-5star-books-botm

3.5 stars

How would you react if you knew you were losing your memories? Are we what we remember? What happens when your brain won't remember who you love, the things you like, the friends you know anymore?

This is a first person account of what it is like to be diagnosed with Early Onset Alzheimer's disease.
It raises some interesting thoughts around how we define ourselves in regards to what we remember, how we define ourselves by our memories and what happens when nothing makes sense anymore whe ...more

4 likes · Like · see review

Jul 17, 2013 Lisa rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 5-stars, favorites, other-fiction, books-to-movies, medicine

This is an excellent fictional look into early onset Alzheimer's from the point of view of the patient. A heartbreaking tale but it gives some good insight to this disease. ...more

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Feb 12, 2015 Hannah rated it really liked it · review of another edition

I can't believe this is Lisa Genova's first novel! Her passion for her book is obvious, and this story is so profound. My favorite thing about this book is how subtly Alice's story is told. She may just be going about her day-to-day life, but the reader sees her Alzheimer's progressing even when she misses it. This shows fantastic technique, because the story is told from Alice's point-of-view, which I found different and refreshing. The whole time, my heart ached for Alice, but I still love how ...more

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