Month: February 2021

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Book Reviews

“Take Care, Son – The Story of My Dad and His Dementia” by Tony Husband

Cartoonist Tony Husband turns his attention to a subject very close to home in this slight, but charming book which chronicles the final years of his father, Ron. We follow Ron’s journey from a Dementia diagnosis right through to his death. Told from both the perspective of Tony and his father, the story reveals the close relationship between the two and the way this relationship is significantly impacted as Ron’s Dementia takes over his life. At first Ron is able to continue living with a degree of independence. The opening sections of the book allow the reader to find out a little more about his lifestyle, family and history. He seems like a larger than life sort of man. As the story progresses Ron becomes more and more confused about his own present condition and eventually moves from the family home into a residential care facility. 

The small snippets of first person narrative and the illustrations which accompany each page give the reader a real insight into the practicalities of Ron’s decline. He laments the loss of his independence when his car is taken away and is heartbroken to discover his dog, Lossie won’t be able to stay with him in the nursing home. However, Husband is quick to point out that the move into residential care hasn’t been an entirely negative experience for his father. Ron enjoys the company of his fellow residents, the entertainment that’s laid on for them and even manages to start a new relationship with a fellow resident. He’s also delighted to discover that Lossie is welcome to come and visit. The dog proves incredibly popular with his new friends. 

Take Care, Son doesn’t go into an awful lot of depth when it comes to exploring the Dementia experience. But what Husband records is very familiar and resonates particularly strongly because each little thought and musing is accompanied by a gorgeous illustration which adds a lot to the telling of a familiar story. I also felt the sections offering the reader a glimpse into Ron’s personal thought life were really clear, insightful and loaded with meaning.

“My memories were confused, jumbled… nothing made sense, the world I knew was disappearing, it didn’t make sense and I presume I didn’t either.”

However, my favourite thing about this short book was the tone in which Husband tells his father’s story. It reads like a warm and deeply respectful conversation between a father and son who really love and care for each other. There’s so much respect and dignity implied within this story that even, in the final few pages when Ron talks honestly about facing death and Tony confronts the loss of his father, the narrative felt sad, but not unbearably so. This is a testament to a life both well lived and concluded with dignity. The whole book is shot through with little nuggets of hope and joy. 

Take Care, Son was published by Robinson in 2014 

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Book Reviews

“The Summer of Lily and Esme” by John Quinn

It’s the summer between Primary and Secondary School and everything’s changing for Alan. His parents have moved the family out of Dublin and bought an old house in a village in the country. At first Alan thinks he’ll be isolated and lonely with no one around to play with. However, within days of the move he’s stumbled upon the two old ladies who live in the cottage next door. Lily and Esme are twins. Although they’re extremely elderly now, they still believe themselves to be little girls and instantly mistake Alan for a young boy they used to play with, who died tragically on the day of their tenth birthday party. With the help of his new friend Lisa and a bunch of friendly locals, Alan works hard to piece together the mystery of what happened, the summer Albert died. There is talk of ghosts, a lot of laughter and a clandestine adventure to the local circus. Thanks to Alan’s efforts, Lily and Esme have the best summer of their lives and Alan himself learns a lot about friendship and the importance of community.

This is a gorgeous novel aimed at upper Primary school aged children. It never mentions the word Dementia though it’s clear from the outset that both the twins are living with the condition. They’re confused and frequently forgetful. They muddle their memories up with the present and are cared for by a stern live-in carer whom they’ve nicknamed Badger. Quinn does a fantastic job of capturing what their condition seems like to a young boy and, through Alan’s responses, painting a really compelling picture of what it looks like to befriend and accept a person living with Dementia and actually benefit from this relationship. A few of the references are a little dated. The Summer of Lily and Esme was clearly written in a pre-Internet age and yet this doesn’t stop it from being utterly charming and compelling. It’s a treat to read such a rich Dementia narrative set right here in Ireland. This is a very special book.

The Summer of Lily and Esme was published by Poolbeg Press in 1991 

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Book Reviews

“Memory” by Margaret Mahy

I’m going to be really honest. It took me longer than usual to get into Carnegie Medal winning writer, Margaret Mahy’s Memory. The novel opens with a quite lengthy, and somewhat confusing section which introduces us to the main protagonist, Jonny Dart. He’s drunk and angry and trying to get to the bottom of an incident which happened many years previously. He wants to track down a girl named Bonnie. It took me quite a few chapters to work out why and, even then, I wasn’t really interested in the backstory about his sister’s tragic and untimely death. Memory really began for me, the moment Jonny stumbled across an elderly lady, pushing a shopping trolley across a car park in the middle of the night.

In some ways Sophie, is the archetypal crazy old lady I frequently encounter in novels. She has Dementia. She lives alone. She dresses oddly and doesn’t eat properly and has let her house fall into disrepair. She owns many, many cats. She is, like every other crazy old lady, firmly stuck in the past. What saves Sophie from becoming a stereotype is the way Mahy gives her quirks and foibles peculiar to her. There’s also a level of gritty honesty here which I’ve rarely encountered in those YA books which tackle the subject of Dementia. Through a series of slightly contrived events, Jonny moves in with Sophie and becomes -if only temporarily- her live-in carer. Mahy gives the reader an unflinching picture of what it means for a young man in his early twenties to care for an elderly stranger, especially one of the opposite sex.

She describes Jonny’s concern over the state of Sophie’s house with a wonderfully accurate matter-of-fact tone. Similarly, Jonny despairs of her eating habits but when she gets distressed offers her a packet of biscuits and tells her to comfort eat the lot. There’s also no squeamishness when it comes to describing the more personal aspects of Sophie’s care such as dealing with her incontinence and helping her to bath. So many of these ‘young person befriends a quirky senior’ narratives shy away from tackling the physical aspect of caring. I’m grateful that Mahy included these vignettes and also offers her readers a kind of manual for how two people can negotiate around each other’s vulnerabilities to find a means of caring for each other. There’s a lot of dignity at work in this book. 

By the time I’d finished Memory, I was captivated by the relationship between Sophie and Jonny Dart. I loved their humour and their warmth. I loved the way the story is grounded in the New Zealand where Mahy grew up. I could’ve done without the flashback episodes or the snippets of lyrics from pop songs which made the book feel a little dated in places when actually the central relationship reads as incredibly contemporary and really fresh.

Memory was published by Harper Collins in 2002 

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Book Reviews

“Tamar” by Mal Peet

Guardian Prize- winning author, Mal Peet won the Carnegie Medal for Tamar and it’s pretty easy to see why. His YA novel is an epic read, spanning fifty years of history and three generations of a complicated family. It’s a big book but I read it in less than twenty four hours because I simply couldn’t put it down. If you like historical sagas with plenty of action, you’ll absolutely love this book. It focuses on Tamar, a young fifteen year old woman who, after her grandfather’s suicide, attempts to unravel his complex past. Peet then uses flashbacks to 1944 to reveal Tamar’s grandfather’s side of the story and introduce the people and events which shaped his life. 

It transpires that Tamar’s grandfather was an undercover agent for the allies, operating in the Dutch resistance during the latter part of World War 2. As Tamar discovers more and more about his past, she begins to suspect that he wasn’t the man he purported to be. In normal circumstances she might have asked questions of her grandmother, the women who’d escaped from the Netherlands with her grandfather in 1945. The two of them had spent the remainder of their lives in England, yet never quite managed to shake off the past. However, Tamar’s grandmother has developed Dementia and can’t offer her granddaughter any help in unravelling the fifty year old mystery of who her grandfather really was.

I’ll be very honest. There are only a few chapters of Tamar which deal explicitly with the grandmother’s Dementia. It’s mostly a kind of historical fiction thriller with a tiny bit of romance thrown in for good measure. It’s a brilliant story, exceptionally well-written and I’m grateful that the inclusion of a Dementia narrative made me pick it up and read it through. The sections which focus on Dementia might be slim but they’re very well-crafted and capture a couple of aspects of the illness I haven’t seen explored in many novels so far. Marijke (the grandmother), is a Dutch speaker who learns English late in life, “her English had never been perfect like Grandad’s. She’d often search for the word for something, clicking her fingers impatiently, then give up and use the Dutch.” As her Dementia develops Marijke loses her English and defaults back to her native Dutch. No one in the care home she lives in understands her. They do, “what English people do when they speak to foreigners: talk slowly and loudly in English, and mime.” 

I’ve not seen this concept of defaulting to a primary language included in any Dementia narrative I’ve read so far, though I’ve witnessed it a few times in community arts practice when working with people living with Dementia who’d spoken Irish or another language before they learnt English. I also noted with interest Marijke’s attempts to hide food from her carers; a throwback to her youth, when she’d hidden food from the Nazi’s who’s overran their neighbourhood. This is another practice I’ve witnessed amidst people living with Dementia.

Peet’s description of Marijke’s Dementia is uncannily accurate and well-observed. The loving and gentle descriptions of how Tamar’s grandfather enters into his wife’s confusion as a means of reassuring her, are worth the read alone. This is why I’m including Tamar in my collection of Dementia narratives. There are only a few chapters featuring the older version of Marijke but they’re substantial enough to make this novel an essential inclusion, not to mention, a fantastic read.

Tamar was published by Walker Books in 2005 

Categories
Book Reviews

“Toffee” by Sarah Crossan

In this stunning verse novel from Carnegie Medal winning YA author Sarah Crossan we meet Alison, a young woman on the run from a difficult situation at home. She ends up in a bleak seaside town. Alone, and with nowhere else to sleep, she hides out in the shed of an abandoned house. It soon transpires the house isn’t empty. An elderly woman named Marla lives there. Dementia has left Marla confused and mistaking Alison for an old friend called Toffee. She invites the young woman to move in with her. At first Alison is quite blatantly taking advantage of Marla but soon she begins to care for her. What transpires is a strange but intriguing friendship where the women become increasingly dependent on each other for company and companionship. The novel is perhaps, best summed up by the short four sentence description on the back cover.

“I am not who I say I am. Marla isn’t who she thinks she is. I am a girl trying to forget. Marla is a women trying to remember.”

Despite their differences Marla and Alison have much in common. They manage to become a kind of support network for each other as Marla tries to make sense of her past and the fractured network of her memories while Alison attempts to brave the future and the big changes she’s going to have to make.

Essentially this is Alison’s story. It’s told in the first person from her perspective but includes descriptions and analysis of Marla, snippets of her dialogue and even secondary sources like text messages. Through Alison’s eyes we are given a wonderful picture of an older woman, living alone with Dementia who is anxious to maintain her independence and determined to continue being fully herself. Marla is not the usual dottery old lady, depicted in much of Dementia fiction. She is feisty, funny and desperately quirky; as annoying as she is likable. In Marla, Crossan has created a unique and incredibly appealing character. She’s made it ok to find aspects of Dementia truly hilarious.

“I can’t get my feckin’ tights on, Marla shouts

from the bedroom next to mine.

My arse has expanded.”

Perhaps the most unique feature of the novel is its style. Crossan has written the entire story in verse. It reads like a novel, though looks like a poetry collection on the page. All the white space around the words serve as a constant reminder of the fact that because of Dementia there is often as much said, or implied in the silences, as there is when Marla speaks. This sense of erasure and retaining what’s essential about who a person is and was, is mirrored in Alison’s story and eluded to in Crossan’s beautiful words.

“No goodbye is forever

unless you can

erase everything you ever knew about a person

and everything you once felt.”

Toffee is a truly beautiful novel. It’s fractured language and lyrical, mesmerising tone is perfect for exploring the theme of Dementia. As I read, I felt Crossan was trying to pin down something fleeting and elusive with her sentences. She does an amazing job of capturing what it’s like for a teenager to do life with someone who’s living with Dementia. I’d recommend this as an essential read for young adults and actual adults alike.

Toffee was published by Bloomsbury in 2019