Book info

• Title Still Alice
• Author Lisa Genova
• Year 2007
• Genre Contemporary

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.

Thoughts

After seeing the brilliant film of this story, I wanted to read the book to see how it compared - both are very similar, the film was a close and accurate representation of the story in the book. It’s a heartbreaking but important read, I think, written mostly from the perspective of the patient so it is so easy and painful to feel the decline in abilities first-hand.

The way it’s written, in stark and brutal fashion makes this feel like a true story rather than a work of fiction, and the characters are so believable, flawed and real that it’s impossible not to empathise with the tragic situation.

It leaves you feeling sad, of course, but there’s also just a spark of hope that if nothing else is left in the world, there’s also love.

Rating: 5 / 5