Category: Book Reviews
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Elizabeth is Missing– Emma Healey
Debut author Emma Healey won the Costa Book Awards in 2014 for Elizabeth is Missing, a clever and gripping novel about a woman who is trying to solve a decades old crime whilst living with Dementia. The novel is narrated by Maud, an elderly lady who is increasingly confused about both the world around her…
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“Summerwater” by Sarah Moss
Summerwater is English writer, Sarah Moss’s seventh novel and occupies familiar territory. Moss writes particularly eloquently about the complicated and often fractured relationships which make up the nuclear family. In Summerwater her gaze falls upon a handful of different families who have chosen to spend -what appears to be the wettest summer ever- in a chalet park in…
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“Rain Birds” by Harriet McKnight
Australian writer, Harriet McKnight’s debut novel, Rain Birds is set in rural Australia, on the edge of the wild and beautiful Murrungowar National Park. McKnight has a wonderful ability to capture the natural world in her writing and I particularly enjoyed the way this novel interweaves the personal experience of how dementia impacts a couple’s relationship, with…
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A Trilogy of Wonderful Grandpa-themed Picture Books
These three stunning picture books aimed at young readers provide ample opportunity to begin conversations with small children about how what it’s like to watch someone they love grow older. All three explore various forms of ageing, including forgetfulness and the loss of memory. Whilst they don’t explicitly mention Dementia, the implication is there, and…
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“Burnt Sugar” by Avni Doshi
Burnt Sugar is Avni Doshi’s debut novel. It was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2020. Set in Pune, India it is narrated by an artist named Antara who is struggling to come to terms with her past as she tries to work out how to care for her mother, who is living with early…
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“The Hard Word Box” by Sarah Hesketh
In 2013, the English poet Sarah Hesketh spent a period of almost five months visiting residents in a residential care home for people living with dementia. She wrote about her experiences, her encounters and the lives of the people she met in this series of moving and evocative poems. The poems are poignant, funny, compassionate…
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“The Father” by Florian Zeller
Translated from the French by Christopher Hampton With a big screen adaptation forthcoming later in 2020/early 2021 I thought I’d revisit French novelist and playwright, Florian Zeller’s incredible play Le Père, (or in English, The Father). Zeller makes bold, creative decisions with this play which explores the Dementia experience of an older Frenchman named André.…
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“Goodbye, Vitamin” by Rachel Khong
There are a number of reasons why I really enjoyed the American writer, Rachel Khong’s debut novel. For one thing it’s very funny. It tackles a relatively serious subject with gravity where gravity’s required and also buckets of humour and wit. Sometimes the humour and pathos are mixed together, as in the following exchange between…
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“We Are Not Ourselves” by Matthew Thomas
We Are Not Ourselves was one of the very first Dementia narratives I encountered and it remains one of the best examples of writing about Dementia I’ve come across in any novel. It is an epic saga, in the old-fashioned sense; a novel which follows an American couple, Eileen and Ed Leary from childhood, through…
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“The Latecomer” by Dimitri Verlhurst
Translated from the Dutch by David Colmer Meet Désiré Cordier, a very unusual kind of hero. Fed up with the drudgery of retired life, hen-pecked by a bossy wife and irritated by his extended family, retired librarian Désiré hatches a cunning plan. He will gradually feign the symptoms of Dementia until he lands himself a…