Madison news - Still Alice by Lisa Genova

It’s hard to say whether the devil really is better if you know it. Alice Howland is a 50-year-old Harvard professor specialising in linguistics with a comfortable marriage and three adult children. When she one day finds herself unable to remember a crucial line in a speech she’s made dozens of times, she thinks little of it. But when she later becomes disorientated and agitated jogging down a familiar street moments from her home, she begins to think something might be very wrong.

It is. Alice is soon diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. Still Alice tracks the progression of her illness as she slowly and inevitably loses every memory she has – including the names and identities of her children and grandchildren, her ability to work and her connection with her husband.

The skill the writer shows in bringing us into Alice’s rapidly failing mind is staggering: first she can’t remember dates. Then she forgets to turn up to teach her classes. Soon she recognises her daughter only as “the pretty woman”. Anyone who’s ever witnessed an aggressive or erratic outburst from an Alzheimer’s patient will gain a new insight into what it must be like to watch the world as you know it slipping from your grasp.

Fifty is hardly elderly. To be diagnosed with a disease of this magnitude when you have almost half your life ahead of you must be horrific, especially when you initially retain enough faculties to anticipate the road ahead. Alice’s family, too, are devastated, especially when they are told that genetic testing is available that will determine whether they too will succumb to the disease. Do they want to live their lives with the burden of that knowledge?

This could be your mother. It could be you. And it’s a beautifully-written and thoroughly researched window into a world that looks so forbidding to anyone who hasn’t experienced it. Don’t pick it up without tissues handy.

- Alexandra Carlton, deputy features editor