Category: Book Reviews

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Book Reviews

“The Wilderness” by Samantha Harvey

I’m going to be honest from the get go, The Wilderness was one of the first fictional dementia narratives I read and it remains one of my favourites. This was my third re-read and Samantha Harvey’s precise and evocative prose actually improves with each subsequent read. There’s a lot going on in this novel. It centres around Jake. Jake has Alzheimer’s. Jake is piecing his life together to make a timeline for his memory doctor. As he tries to order the events of the last seventy odd years his ability to maintain the facades he’s built up begins to slip. Jake is a man who’s constructed his sense of self out of evasions and deceptions. As the novel progresses and his dementia develops he finds it harder and harder to recall the truth of who he is, what he’s done and how his life has played out. Jake’s sense of self gradually unravels as Harvey deftly paints a picture of an old man who is more easy to empathise with in his vulnerability and confusion than he has been at any other point in his life. 

A cast of women hover around the edges of Jake’s story. His wife, Helen. Joy, the woman he slept with in the early days of his marriage. Eleanor, who has always loved him and now finds herself Jake’s carer, at the end of his life, when he can no longer remember who she is. His mother, Sarah whose presence overshadows his entire existence, colouring his perception of everything. And his young daughter, Alice who died as a child yet reappears to him in adult form as the dementia begins to take hold. All their stories swirl around the novel, repeating, intertwining and fracturing. The reader is offered multiple perspectives and interpretations of the same events and incidents. It’s confusing and at times frustrating. It’s exactly as I imagine an experience of dementia might be and this is why I continually return to The Wilderness as an example of what a dementia narrative could and should be. It’s all consuming. It’s experiential. It drew me in and felt almost like a journey through an actual wilderness and yet it’s also shot through with moments of precise clarity, of incredible beauty and profound pathos. It is, in short, a marvellous book.

The Wilderness was published by Vintage in 2009 

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“Bailegangaire” by Tom Murphy

Mommo is an elderly Irish woman living with dementia, although Tom Murphy characterises her as senile. This is likely to be a reflection on both when the play is set and when it was written. Mommo lives in a small, rural cottage and is cared for by her granddaughter Mary, who is a trained nurse. Mary is fed up with her isolated lifestyle. She has little company except for Mommo who repeats the same story every night. Every so often Mary and Mommo are visited by Mary’s sister Dolly, who’s also trapped in the life she’s created for herself. As the play opens we find all three women on the cusp of a new kind of existence.

Dolly is pregnant and trying to convince her sister to pass the baby off as her own. Dolly’s husband is working in England long term and she’s having another man’s child. If she can convince Mary to take responsibility for the baby before her husband returns at Christmas, he’ll be none the wiser about her affairs. Mary is hoping to leave her caring responsibilities behind. She’s looking forward to starting out again, independently, away from home. She’s convinced that if she can get Mommo to finally finish telling her story of a laughing competition -set in the town of Bailengangaire (‘the town without laughter’)- she’ll be free of her past and able to make a fresh start elsewhere.

Murphy’s characterisation of Mommo is incredibly rich. The language and dialogue employed in her repeated story is particularly distinctive and it’s refreshing to see such a believable and captivating portrayal of a working class, rural Irish woman. The dialogue and repetitive linguistic tics are worth reading for alone. I also really appreciated the way Murphy explores the weight and responsibility of caring for an elderly relative in a rural place. Mary’s experience feels both claustrophobic and isolating and, although it would have negative implications for Mommo, it’s hard not to root for her escape. Finally, I loved the humour in this play. All three women banter off each other. Mary and Dolly even use the tics in their grandmother’s language to gently take the piss out of her. They can be harsh enough in how they speak to each other and yet there’s a raw kind of fondness permeating their relationship. I’d love a chance to see this play performed.

Bailegangaire was published by Methuen in 2001. 

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“About My Mother” by Tahar Ben Jelloun

Translated from the French by Ros Schwartz and Lulu Norman

Tahar is sitting at his mother’s bedside listening to her long-hidden secrets and stories unfold. Lalla Fatma has dementia. She is confused about where and when she’s living. As the novel plays out she frequently digresses back to her childhood in Fez in the 1940s. She’s no longer aware that she’s actually living in Tangier in 2000. In a series of snapshots from her past she talks about her three arranged marriages, her children, her extended family and the friendships she’s had across the years. These flashback scenes were my favourite parts of About My Mother. They are rich with detail and offer a real insight into Moroccan culture, illuminating practices and beliefs I’ve never come across before. In the first half of the novel these flashback sections provide a structure for the narrative, separating the past and the present into distinct chapters. As the novel progresses and Lalla Fatma’s condition becomes worse, time becomes a muddier concept. We flick between past and present at a dizzying speed and the narrative alternates between the impressions and memories of Lalla Fatma and her son.

The text is often disjointed and difficult to follow, mimicking the old woman’s confusion. There are painfully accurate descriptions of how the dementia has affected her temperament. She is particularly harsh towards her live-in carer, a close family friend, and struggles to abandon her independence as she becomes more and more dependent on others for her everyday care. There are also a number of very believable but nonetheless upsetting descriptions of how the aging process has negatively impacted Lalla Fatma’s physicality. Her memories of her own early sexual experiences and her young body contrast sharply with the descriptions of how age and infirmity have left her physical diminished, bedridden and incontinent. 

About My Mother is not an easy read. There are very few moments of levity in the text. It is an intense novel exploring both dementia and female identity within a patriarchal oppressive society. However, what shone through for me was the beautiful language and effortless descriptions of Moroccan culture which conjured up a striking picture of a country I’ve only once visited, but instantly loved. I also found the relationship between Tahar and his mother an incredibly moving one. There’s a deep and clear bond between the two which allows them to find points of connection throughout Lalla Fatma’s illness, right up until the moment of her death.

About My Mother was published by Telegram in 2016 

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“The Built Moment” by Lavinia Greenlaw

Lavinia Greenlaw’s most recent poetry collection, The Built Moment is split into two sections, the first of which explores her father’s journey with dementia. The poems included are, in my opinion, some of the finest and most memorable writing about dementia I’ve come across whilst reading extensively on the subject. I’ve repeatedly found that poetry, with its use of white space, metaphor and resonant language provides a good vehicle through which to express some of the more difficult to quantify aspects of dementia. Greenlaw’s writing blew me away. 

There’s a warmth to these poems which reveals the relationship between the poet and her father and this often translates into a kind of desperation where the poet admits her own inability to help or arrest the progress of the illness, “I tell him I am saving him as quickly as I can.” There are even moments of genuine humour. I particularly enjoyed “The Finishing Line” where the poet’s brother, sitting at his father’s bedside, shares an anecdote about running a race dressed as a gorilla. It reminded me of the muddle and mixed emotions of tending to a much-loved family member’s illness where all the feelings sit close to the surface: sorrow, grief, and also joy. 

However, the thing I found most moving about The Built Moment was Greenlaw’s ability to pin down in words, the experiential side of dementia both from her own and her father’s perspective. It’s notoriously difficult -I know, I’ve tried- to write about an experience as strange as dementia when it isn’t something you’ve been through yourself in your own mind and body. Greenlaw uses evasive, slippery, meandering phrases and words to effectively convey how it must feel to be present and also becoming absent at the same time. “My father has lost his way out of the present./ Something is stopping him leaving, nothing becomes/ the immediate past.” One poem is called “My father has no shadow” and another, “While he can still speak,” in which he talks to his hands and legs as he gets dressed, suggesting he now sits at some distance from his own self. 

It’s the use of language which has had me returning to this collection repeatedly over the last year or so. Greenlaw more than most writers I’ve come across is using words to say the unsayable. She does so with a masterful lightness of touch.

The Built Moment was published by Faber & Faber in 2019

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“When the Music Stops” by Joe Heap

When the Music Stops is a perfectly pleasant if somewhat predictable wee novel. We meet Ella at seven different points in her life, from a childhood in working class Glasgow, through WW2 to the heyday of rock ‘n’ roll in 60s era London and a, (slightly baffling), late career move to nursing. Throughout her turbulent life three things about Ella remain constant: her love of music, particularly the guitar, her complicated love affair with Robert and the fact that people seem to die around her with worrying frequency. I’m not going to say too much about the premise of this novel. It’s not the kind of book I would usually read. I found it quite contrived and a little thin, but I can also see why readers might enjoy it as a piece of escapism. 

Each of the seven chapters from Ella’s life are framed by short sections from her final days as an elderly women. Ella is living with dementia. We know this because on several occasions she tells us she’s living with dementia. She is eighty seven years old and trapped on a boat lost at sea with her infant grandson. The incidents which led up to this scenario are never quite explained but an elderly woman with dementia, adrift at sea acts as a handy plot device through which the author draws all the various themes at play in Ella’s life together. One by one seven dead people join Ella on the boat offering her advice and practical assistance in helping her to get the baby to safety. It’s made quite clear that these people are all figments of her imagination and yet the reality is she is still able to hoist a main sail, lower lifeboats, find and fire flare guns and all sorts of things which I found completely implausible given the fact that great pains are taken to remind us just how much her memory and capability have been diminished.

I’ve raised the question of dementia as a plot device a number of times in these book reviews. I completely understand that the nature of fiction means that characters often exist primarily to serve the story’s plot. However, I do think that when it comes to using a character with dementia to advance a plot or create dramatic tension, the writer should endeavour to ensure the depiction is well-researched, fully-formed and accurate. I didn’t find the character of Ella as depicted in the “dementia” sections of this novel at all believable. She is confused, forgetful and frail when it suits the plot and at other times uncharacteristically competent. When the Music Stops is a light, fun read and as such is quite enjoyable but I don’t think it stands up as a dementia narrative.

When the Music Stops was published by Harper Collins in 2020 

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“Happiness” by Aminatta Forna

Happiness is definitely a London novel. The city is as much a character in the book as the two main protagonists around whom the plot resolves. Attila is a recently widowed, Ghanaian psychiatrist, visiting London to present a paper about trauma at an academic conference. Jean is a recently divorced American who is spending some time in London whilst conducting an extended study into urban foxes. The two, quite literally, bump into each other whilst crossing Waterloo Bridge and strike up a friendship which eventually becomes a relationship. As the novel progresses Jean helps Atilla search for his niece’s missing son, mobilising the network of volunteer fox-spotters she’s developed across inner city London. The people who populate this novel, like the foxes Jean tracks and the traumatised individuals Atilla has worked with in the wake of various conflicts, exist on the margins of society and yet are very much interdependent and reliant upon each other for survival. Forna is asking her readers to consider questions around co-existence and community.

Whilst in London Atilla also takes every opportunity to visit his former lover and lifelong research partner, Rosie who is living in a residential care facility. Rosie has developed early onset dementia and is increasingly incapable of recognising Atilla when he visits though she retains some motor memory of their physicality. Atilla is determined to find better care arrangements for Rosie. He’s concerned that the nursing home staff aren’t being as vigilant with her care as they could be. In Atilla’s absence, Emmanuel -the carer whom Rosie had been particularly close to- has been fired and she’s been unable to bond with anyone else. Atilla’s particularly concerned about Rosie’s loss of appetite and disinterest. She isn’t receiving much stimuli or attention in the home. He conspires to set her up in her own apartment where he will pay Emmanuel to be a live-in carer. This plan never comes to fruition as Rosie’s condition deteriorates quickly and she eventually dies. Forna’s depiction of dementia only takes up a small amount of the novel but it’s significant for its portrayal of how care staff are treated and the pressures they face within a residential care setting. On the whole it’s an accurate depiction of dementia : Rosie exhibits ongoing confusion, an inability to tend to her own physical needs and, by the novel’s conclusion has become occasionally violent. Forna intersperses these darker snapshots of the dementia experience with moments of genuine fondness and even levity between Atilla, Rosie and Emmanuel.

I thoroughly enjoyed Happiness. The metaphor of the fox community which runs throughout the novel exists as a perfectly drawn exploration of interdependence between all the living beings who call London home. These complex ideas of community, connection and dependence also exist in the care setting which Forna gives us a glimpse into

Happiness was published by Bloomsbury in 2018 

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“Ten Days” by Austin Duffy

Irish novelist, Austin Duffy’s second novel, Ten Days is mostly set in New York. Photographer, Wolf is visiting the city with his daughter Ruth so she can take part in her late mother’s family’s celebration of the ten High Holy Days of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. The visit will culminate in a ceremony to scatter Miriam’s ashes over the Hudson River. Miriam has recently passed away after a short battle with cancer. Though, at the time, separated from Wolf, she’d asked her husband to return to the family home so they could be together for the last few weeks. She’s also left him strict instructions concerning both her funeral arrangements and plans for Ruth to be part of the extended family’s holiday celebrations in New York. Wolf is neither Jewish nor in the family’s good books. They rightly judge him for his treatment of Miriam. He feels excluded from the celebrations and yet continues to persevere with his in-laws. It’s essential that his daughter is accepted and feels at home within the family.

Wolf has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Though he doesn’t tell his wife or daughter, he’s made an elaborate plan to provide for Ruth when he can no longer look after her. He’s booked one way tickets from London for both of them. The novel implies that Wolf intends to kill himself in America, whilst he’s arranged for Ruth to move in with her Jewish in-laws in New York. I’ll not give any spoilers away but it’s enough to say his plan doesn’t work out quite as he’d intended. The novel ends a little differently from how I’d expected and ultimately I was grateful for this.

I loved Ten Days. I loved the writing. It’s sharp, well-crafted and pacey. It’s very much a city novel and there’s a definite urban tightness to the way it’s written. I loved the depictions of Jewish culture and the way they’re seamlessly woven through the book. I also loved the occasional dips into the world of artists and musicians -some real, some fabricated- which Wolf has built his career around.

Duffy’s penned a great depiction of strained relationships, put under further pressure by the increasing confusion Wolf’s experiencing. He’s not particularly close to his daughter. He’s been ostracised by his in-laws. And yet he’s trying his best to prepare for their future together, even as he begins to forget who they are. There’s a woozy quality to the way Duffy writes dementia. Both time and spatial awareness come in and out of focus, sometimes repeating in a loop. I found this a very effective mode of capturing the dementia experience of a man who’s desperately trying to hold on to his sense of reality. It’s also a novel which explores power and ego. Wolf is a man who’s been used to riding roughshod over others’ feelings; the central section of the novel, where he discovers his mother’s Alzheimer’s, then coldly and pragmatically dispatches her to a nursing home, is quite a hard read. Now, he’s increasingly dependent on other people, some of whom he’s treated poorly in the past. This wasn’t the dementia narrative I was expecting to read. I enjoyed it all the more for that.

Ten days was published by Granta in 2021 

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“The Imposter” by Anna Wharton

I was lucky enough to get my hands on a pre-publication proof copy of Anna Wharton’s first novel, The Imposter which is due for release in early 2021. Anna has been a journalist, writer and ghost writer for many, many years and most notably worked alongside Wendy Mitchell on her bestselling memoir about her life with early onset Alzheimer’s, Somebody I Used to Know. It’s easy to see how the time spent working on this amazing non-fiction book impacted Wharton’s first novel. Dementia is a key theme running through The Imposter and the description of both the illness and Grace, who is living with Alzheimer’s are both incredibly accurate and deftly written.

I want to be careful not to give away too many spoilers when describing The Imposter. Suffice to say if you enjoy a well-written thriller with twists and turns and surprises along the way. You’re going to really enjoy this novel. The main protagonist Chloe is an almost reclusive young woman who works as an archivist in a local newspaper by day and spends all her spare time caring for her Nan who has recently been diagnosed with Dementia. Chloe’s life changes really quickly when her Nan’s condition begins to decline so rapidly she’s forced to move the older lady into a residential care facility. As Chloe faces this huge life change she also becomes obsessed with a decades old, missing child case she discovers in the archives at work. Chloe begins to lose touch with her Nan as she becomes more and more entangled in the lives of the missing child’s parents who have never given up hope that their daughter might someday come home.

I’m not going to say too much about the missing child storyline in The Imposter except to say it had me hooked from the start and still on tenterhooks four hundred pages later. Wharton is a brilliant storyteller with a gift for building up tension and introducing believable twists in her plotlines. As a Dementia narrative I also found The Imposter very convincing. It includes so many familiar tropes I’ve come to associate with Alzheimer’s: wandering, confusing times and not recognising family members, forgetting when and what is appropriate to eat. Anyone who’s spent time with a family member or loved one living with Alzheimer’s will recognise both Grace’s behaviour patterns and the ways in which Chloe attempts to protect and reassure her Nan. There’s a scene near the start where Chloe is forced to buy yet another identical electric kettle to replace the ones her Nan has melted on the hob, which I’ve experienced personally with family members who have Dementia. Wharton’s depiction of Chloe is also spot on. Chloe both resents and relies upon the support of the care facility and social worker and Wharton does a wonderful job of capturing her frustration. It’s abundantly clear that Wharton has done a huge amount of research into Dementia and as a result Grace is one of the more believable and accurate of the characters I’ve encountered in my reading so far.

I was also incredibly relieved to find that Dementia has not been reduced now to a plot device in The Imposter. The storyline which explores Grace and Chloe’s relationship runs parallel to the more thriller-like storyline in the novel and exists as a wonderful piece of character development, allowing us to get an insight into who Chloe is and how her relationship with her Nan has developed. I really enjoyed this novel. It was great to see a character with Dementia included in such a well-developed way in a novel which is not primarily about Dementia. I’m looking forward to reading more of Anna Wharton’s work.

The Imposter was published by Mantle Books in 2021 

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“Three Things About Elsie” by Joanna Cannon

Joanna Cannon’s second novel Three Things About Elsie is set in a home for the elderly. The book takes place across a single evening just after 84 year old Florence has taken a tumble. For the duration of the novel, she’s lying on the floor of her flat waiting to see if anyone’s going to come and offer her help. As her mind skips backwards and forwards between her early life and the more recent events which have brought her to this place, the reader goes on a journey with Florence, piecing together a very old mystery. Florence is clearly living with dementia. She’s frequently confused and often forgetful. There’s a wonderful scene where a cleaner opens her kitchen cupboard to reveal she’s been inadvertently stockpiling Battenberg cake.

Florence is troubled by the sudden appearance of a new resident in the old people’s home. Though this man claims to be someone else, she’s absolutely convinced he’s a man she knew when she was a girl. A man she’s incredibly afraid of. A man whom she thought died fifty years ago. Florence begins her own investigation though it’s increasingly hard for her to keep track of what’s true and what’s not. She’s ably assisted by her friends Jack and Elsie though by the novel’s conclusion we realise Elsie is not exactly what she seems. None of the staff in the older people’s home take Florence’s concerns seriously. She’s frequently dismissed, often ignored and lives in constant fear of being sent to live in a specialist dementia care facility. 

Three Things About Elsie is very similar to Elizabeth is Missing in tone, theme and approach. It’s part of the increasingly large canon of fiction using dementia as a trope within crime fiction and thrillers. It’s a pleasant enough read if somewhat unsurprising. You’ll spot the big twist coming from quite early on. At times it feels like the symptoms of Florence’s dementia fit all too neatly around the plot. She’s confused when the plot requires a little ambiguity and at other times crystal clear and more insightful than many of the other characters. Without giving away too many spoilers I think Cannon effectively handles the conceit of having Florence imagine people who aren’t really there. The reader gets to see both sides of the conversation. The other characters only hear what Florence says. I also enjoyed the aspects dealing with how the care staff perceived their roles and felt the ongoing issue of older people being dismissed and infantilised was handled very well in this novel. It’s not the best dementia narrative I’ve ever read but it is an enjoyable read and you’ll not regret spending time with the characters.

Three Things About Elsie was published by Borough Press in 2018 

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“Frangipani House” by Beryl Gilroy

Frangipani House, Guyana born novelist Beryl Gilroy’s first book is set in her own birthplace. The novel’s title refers to a residential care facility where elderly women are sent to live out their final days. Mama King, the novel’s chief protagonist is forcing to move into the home by a delegation of absent children and grandchildren. She’s quite convinced that she’d be better off managing by herself and goes out of her way to be as obstreperous as possible, frequently clashing heads with the home’s owner and ultimately making a break for freedom, to live on the streets with a rag tag collection of other homeless people who give her the care and kindness she has not experienced from either her family or the people they’ve paid to look after her.

Frangipani House, like many texts of its era, does not use the term dementia, however it’s clear that Mama King is becoming more and more confused as the novel progresses. She frequently forgets where and when she’s living, mixing the past with the present and has conversations with people who aren’t present. She is not as capable of looking after herself as she’d like to think. Mama King also gives us an insight into how the other residents of Frangipani house are treated. Several are much more confused than she is. Including one ninety year old lady who inconveniently passes away, just before her birthday celebrations. The staff decide there’s no point wasting all the party food. They wheel the dead woman out in her chair and tell the other residents she’s just napping so they can continue to celebrate. A number of anecdotes like this reveal how the elderly residents are not treated with the respect and honour they deserve.

Frangipani House is a wonderful exploration of how ageing is perceived within this particular African community. The younger people talk a lot about respecting their elders and yet, when it comes to delivering physical care, they are quick to institutionalize their parents and delegate responsibility. Gilroy also explores the role of the older woman. Mama King has been a mother not only to her own daughters, but also to their children. Her girls, having emigrated to America, send their children home to be raised in Guyana. Gilroy’s novel questions how fair this system is. The children expect their mothers to provide free childcare, but when it comes to caring for these women in their later years, the same children shirk their responsibility. Frangipani House is a slim novel yet it is rich with detail and colour and full of well-placed observations about what it means to be elderly, female and African.

Frangipani House was published by Heinemann Educational Books in 1986