Tag: Family
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“Back to Blackbrick” by Sarah Moore Fitzgerald
Cosmo’s grandad is beginning to exhibit the early signs of Alzheimer’s. A team of social workers appear at the house he shares with his grandparents, hoping to test Grandad Kevin’s memory. If he doesn’t pass this memory test, Grandad will be dispatched to a nursing home. Cosmo is particularly close to his grandparents after his…
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“Aliceheimer’s; Alzheimer’s Through the Looking Glass” by Dana Walrath
Anthropologist, artist and writer Dana Walrath became a live-in carer for her mother Alice after her Alzheimer’s diagnosis became too much for her to manage alone. Moving her mother from her apartment in New York to the family home in rural Vermont, Walrath used the months they spent together to both record her mother’s dementia…
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Scar Tissue by Michael Ignatieff
First published in the early 90s and concerned with late 80s America, Michael Ignatieff’s novel Scar Tissueexplores the dementia narrative at a point when much less was known about the illness. In fact the narrator, a 45 year old philosophy professor, does not use the term dementia when describing his mother’s condition. Her official prognosis is…
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“Erasure” by Percival Everett
I’m just going to begin by laying my cards on the table. Erasure is an absolutely brilliant novel; one of the most interesting books I’ve read this year. It was recommended to me by the novelist Keith Ridgway when I asked for suggestions of novels which explored diversity in dementia narratives. The dementia aspect of the novel…
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Supernova
Supernova is Harry Macqueen’s second movie. It was both written and directed by Macqueen who spent a substantial amount of time researching dementia and visiting dementia support groups. The film is set against the stunning backdrop of the Lake District and features two very established actors and longterm friends playing lovers coming to terms with a…
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“An Unravelling” by Elske Rahill
Irish author, Elske Rahill’s second novel is an epic beast. It follows the lives of four generations of women in a large family, over a particularly turbulent period. Molly is the matriarch of the family. She’s in her eighties and very much focused upon helping her granddaughters, Cara and Freya bring up their young children.…
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The Father
The Father is playwright, Florian Zeller’s directorial debut. He co-wrote the screenplay with fellow playwright Christopher Hampton based on his own 2012 play, Le Père. I’ve read and written about Le Père on several occasions. It’s an important dementia text in its attempts to allow the audience to see the world through the eyes of someone living with dementia. It…
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“The Visiting Hour” by Frank McGuinness
This brand new play by Frank McGuinness is absolutely bang up to date. Set in a residential care facility during the Covid 19 pandemic it explores the impact of Lockdown upon older people and their loved ones. The Visiting Hour takes place over the single hour in a week when a woman is permitted to visit with…
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“The Story of Forgetting” by Stefan Merrill Block
The Story of Forgetting is Stefan Merrill Block’s debut novel. It is a sprawling work which merges realism and fantastical elements in a story spanning hundreds of years and many generations of the same family. During its best moments the storytelling is beautiful and captivating. At other times the novel feels a little unsure of itself…
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“This is Paradise” by Will Eaves
I am a massive Will Eaves fan. I love the way Eaves puts a sentence together. I love the kindness at the heart of his writing, the wit, the lyricality, the gentle humour. All my Will Eaves books are heavily underlined. They are full of sentences and thoughts I want to return to and unpick…