Tag: Novels

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Book Reviews

“Grandpa’s Great Escape” by David Walliams

I don’t make a habit of criticising other author’s work. I know how difficult it is to write a novel. I know that the beauty of a book is often in the eye of the beholder and everyone has different tastes. What gives me the right to make a value judgment about a novel? However, every so often, a book comes along which leaves me so riled up I’m afraid I can’t keep from being critical. 

I’ve never read any of David Walliam’s kids’ books before. I knew they were incredibly popular – NUMBER ONE bestsellers, according to the cover- and I also knew many of my friends and colleagues in the kids’ book world had reservations about both Walliam’s work and also the increasing popularity of children’s books written by celebrity authors. I’m not going to wade into that argument, but I do think they are voicing legitimate concerns and, if Grandpa’s Great Escape is similar to the rest of Walliams’ work I’d have to say I have huge issues with his lazy and borderline misogynistic portrayal of women, his lazy, cliched, offensive depictions of BAME characters and the slightly snide and sneery way he writes about working class people. Putting these reservations aside for the moment, however, I will attempt to focus on Walliams’ exploration of dementia in this novel.

Dementia is not mentioned by name in Grandpa’s Great Escape but as the novel begins with the line “one day Grandpa began to forget things,” and Walliams goes on to outline how he’s taken to wandering off at night, confusing the past with the present and does not recognise close family members, it’s fair to say Grandpa has developed dementia. The novel’s plot outlines his adventures with his grandson Jack. Swept up in an extended delusion that he’s still living in the days of WW2 when he served his country as a fighter pilot, Grandpa runs away from home, hides out in a spitfire in the Imperial War Museum, is incarcerated in an old people’s home which he mistakes for a Prisoner of War camp, leads a mass break out from the home and eventually steals a spitfire from the Imperial War Museum which he flies away in. The plot is quite frankly absurd, but it is a children’s book and I’m all for wild flights of fancy in literature aimed at both children and adults. The problem here is the tone. Most of the outlandish events are written with such flippancy that the suspension of disbelief disintegrates instantly. Walliams has often been accused of being diet-Dahl but he lacks Dahl’s ability to believe his own magic. The made up stuff feels made up and I doubt it would make it past the discerning imagination of most eight year olds. It is badly written nonsense.

I’d be annoyed if this was all Walliams was offering his readers, but I think Grandpa’s Great Escape is so much worse than a poorly written piece of children’s literature. It’s attempting to address an important issue; presenting a character with dementia to countless young readers who might well have a grandparent or loved one living with the illness. As such, it’s unforgivable. Grandpa’s dementia is like no dementia I’ve ever encountered in almost fifteen years of working in this area. He can’t remember his family, confuses times and dates, forgets things and yet manages to mastermind elaborate escape plans, fly a spitfire plane, enter into complicated conversations and at all times remain fastidiously and neatly dressed in full army regalia. It’s quite clear from this portrayal that Walliams has done no research at all into how dementia would actually impact an elderly man or what effect the condition might have on his young grandson. Furthermore, the depiction of the residential care facility Grandpa’s moved into is terrifying. He’s drugged, physically abused by carers and isolated from his family. If I were reading this novel, as a young person whose grandpa had dementia, I’d be both terrified by the possibility he might be incarcerated in a Colditz-style care home and also full of the false hope that he might make a miraculous recovery from his illness. 

At best this book is badly written. At worst it’s downright harmful and instils a false narrative about dementia. I wish all those children, (or perhaps parents), who’ve made it a NUMBER ONE bestseller had instead picked up one of the amazing books for kids I’ve previously highlighted on the blog. 

Grandpa’s Great Escape was published by Harper Collins in 2015 

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“The Twilight Years” by Sawako Ariyoshi

Translated from the Japanese by Mildred Tahara

First published in Japan in 1972, Sawako Ariyoshi’s novel, The Twilight Years was not translated into English for almost a decade. It is very much a period piece, beautifully written and faithfully translated, albeit a little dated in terms of its outlook and attitude. The novel’s main protagonist is Kyoko, a middle-aged woman who lives with her husband and teenage son in a small house in Tokyo. Her elderly in-laws live in a purpose built bungalow on the other side of the yard, although she is not particularly close to them. This changes when her mother-in-law dies unexpectedly and her father-in-law begins acting strangely. Shigezo is diagnosed with senile dementia and becomes increasingly dependent upon his daughter-in-law for care and support.

The writing is exquisite. Ariyoshi gives us a stunning snapshot of family dynamics in a modern 1960s middle class home. The novel says as much about changing attitudes to the role of women as it does about how dementia is viewed. Kyoko is expected to be solely responsible for her father-in-law’s care, including sleeping in the same room as him once he begins to wander off, bathing, toileting and feeding him. She’s also responsible for maintaining the house and feeding her family and still must manage to hold down a day job. I had to keep reminding myself that this was a portrait of a different time as I found the men’s attitudes so utterly deplorable. There is no sense of sharing responsibility for elderly care. Looking after the sick and ageing is not considered a worthy role for a man.

There’s also no question of bringing in outside help. Shigezo is not eligible for regular caring support. The specialised residential care units are all oversubscribed. His only option is a horrific-sounding mental hospital, although Kyoko is advised to avoid this option. She’s repeatedly reminded that an older person should be looked after at home by his relatives. There’s an interesting paradox at work in this novel. Older people are to be respected. Their families must honour them by caring for them in their final years. And yet, the rhetoric around ageing is quite disturbing. As the average life expectancy rises in Japan, the younger people are horrified by the reality of growing old. Shigezo is described as a burden and disgusting and on several occasions, younger members of his family express the belief that they’d rather kill themselves than end up living as he lives. At times these passages make quite hard reading. The Twilight Years is a testament to a different time. The protagonists are many years away from understanding the complexities of dementia or how a person might live well with the illness.

However, it’s not an entirely depressing novel. There are moments of simple beauty and times when we’re given an insight into more positive aspects of elderly life in Japan. I also loved the way Shigezo’s relationship with his daughter-in-law progresses and changes throughout the novel. Kyoko has always disliked and distrusted the old man but as her caring responsibilities place her in intimate proximity to him she slowly begins to form a connection and by the time he finally passes away, is incredibly fond of her father-in-law.

The Twilight Years was published by Peter Owen: London in 1984 

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“The Housekeeper and The Professor” by Yogo Ogawa

Translated from the Japanese by Stephen Snyder

Memory and memory loss are reoccurring themes in Japanese novelist, Yoko Ogawa’s fiction. Last year I read and thoroughly enjoyed her most recent novel, The Memory Police which is entirely focused upon the power and importance of memory. Here, in a much earlier novel, The Housekeeper and The Professor, Ogawa focuses upon a close set of characters and explores the relationship between a professional housekeeper and carer, the older mathematician she is paid to care for and her ten year old son whom she often brings to work with her.

The so-called Professor of the title is an intriguing character. He’s an academic and mathematics genius who, several years previously, sustained a traumatic brain injury in a car accident and has since struggled to maintain short term memories. When we’re first introduced to the Professor he cannot remember anything which took place more than 80 minutes ago. He has resorted to pinning notes on to his clothes in an attempt to convey important pieces of information to himself. The Professor’s fondness for maths and baseball remain intact, as does his ability to reminisce about the distant past. All other thoughts and experiences, no matter how visceral or important, fade from his memory within a short time. As the novel progresses and the Professor’s condition worsens, his short-term memory gradually erodes until he finds himself struggling to remember anything and is, in the book’s final chapters, moved into residential care.

The Housekeeper and the Professor is not explicitly a novel dealing with Dementia. However, many of the symptoms displayed by the Professor are associated with various kinds of Dementia: his memory loss and disorientation, the comfort he takes from routine, his preoccupation with the past, the slow decline of his physical health and inability to connect with a carer he doesn’t recognise from one visit to the next. Therefore, it’s possible to learn about these specific experiences from Ogawa’s portrait of the Professor. I’ve included this novel in my list of texts because it explores a youngish man’s experience of memory loss, (the Professor is only in his late 50s when his condition first develops), and because it’s such a well-drawn and invaluable synopsis of the relationship which can develop between a person and their professional carer. By the novel’s close, it is quite clear that the time and attention she’s given to the Professor, mean that the Housekeeper understands him better than his own family. 

This is a gentle novel with beautifully crafted characters and due attention paid to recording the experience of memory loss with honesty and precision, but also a modicum of hope. I’ve really enjoyed Ogawa’s writing and now intend to track down more of her novels. I’d thoroughly recommend this book. 

The Housekeeper and the Professor was published by Vintage in 2010 

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“Before the Coffee Gets Cold” by Toshikazu Kawaguchi

Translated from the Japanese by Geoffrey Trousselot

Before the Coffee Gets Cold was a huge hit in Japan when it was first published in 2015 and, after translation, has proven to be extremely popular internationally. It includes many tropes of Japanese literature -the focus on family structures, fantastical elements, café culture- and yet, having read a lot of Japanese literature over the last few years I found this novel very slight and a little flat. It felt a bit generic and forgettable to me. It is, however, interestingly structured. The novel is split into four distinct sections, each one focused upon a regular customer in the basement café where the novel is set. Though the cast of characters all appear in each section, each of the quarters is clearly devoted to a particular person or couple. 

The café itself is an intriguing conceit. If a customer sits in a particular chair it is possible to travel back to the past or forward to the future to meet another customer in the same café. Unfortunately, there is an ever-growing list of caveats and rules when it comes to the time travelling seat. Customers may only travel once, cannot change the present and must return before their coffee gets cold. As a magic realist writer, I found this scenario really appealing but was a little disappointed by how Kawaguchi developed it. He never seems to fully exploit or explore the potential of time travel and each escapade resolves much too neatly. The novel’s ending, in particular, feels a little too like a Hallmark movie to be truly satisfying.

The second section of Before the Coffee Gets Cold, is entitled “Husband and Wife” and follows Fusagi, an older Japanese man who has recently been diagnosed with dementia and his wife Kohtake who is a nurse. The scene begins when Fusagi drops into the café to leave a letter for his wife. Kohtake is sitting at a table in plain sight. This is the first time her husband has not recognised her, and she is naturally quite upset. The women who work in the café try their best to comfort their friend. The novel gives the reader an interesting snapshot of how dementia is viewed culturally in Japan. As a nurse, Kohtake insists that she will be able to look after her husband’s physical needs when the illness begins to remove his independence. She will put his needs above her own desires as his partner. Later, upset by the deterioration in her husband’s condition, Kohtake asks to use the time travelling chair to return to a point in the past where her husband was well and unaware of his condition. She’d like to spend a few minutes with the old Fusagi, before his personality began to change. Kohtake does not travel back far enough. She meets her husband at a point where he already knows his diagnosis though he’s carefully hiding his symptoms from her. Fusagi insists that he does not want to become a patient to his wife. He wants her to promise that she will leave him to professional carers when his dementia advances to the point that Kohtake can no longer see him as her husband.

There’s so much potential in this novel. Kawaguchi could have explored the complex power structures and emotional connections inherent within a relationship where one of the partners develops dementia. He could have taken a longer look at the differences between Eastern and Western attitudes to both dementia and how the elderly are perceived. I’d have loved him to fully unpick the huge moral question of whether you’d change the future if you could. Instead, he gives us a charming story about a couple and a magical chair. It’s a neat little dementia narrative and the fantastical elements do not jar but I can’t help but wish we’d been given a little more depth.

Before the Coffee Gets Cold was published by Picador in 2019 

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“A Chronicle of Forgetting” by Sebastijan Pregelj

Translated from the Slovene by Rawley Grau

Slovene novelist, Sebastijan Pregelj’s slender novel, A Chronicle of Forgetting is a beautifully written book, expertly translated by Rawley Grau. The prose is clean and elegant, allowing Pregelj to experiment with hidden meanings and images inherent within the text. The novel is set in a Slovene nursing home and focuses upon a small number of residents and staff members who we see through the eyes of one elderly male resident. It is divided up into four sections, including an opening section narrated by the main protagonist at his own funeral and a final section narrated by an unnamed carer who might be representative of the man’s inner life. The novel closes with this haunting statement, delivered over the man’s deathbed. 

“You are what has happened and what is yet to come. 

You are life as it is.”

Perhaps these words can be read as a kind of key which unlocks the entire novel. This is a book where time itself is extremely fluid. As the narrator’s Dementia develops, he slips backwards and forwards in his reminiscences. His past life and regrets blur with the present as he attempts to make amends for the mistakes he’s made. At times it’s unclear whether these grand gestures have actually been made or are simply plans the man is making for a future he might not live to see. He enjoys a romance with an elderly female resident though it’s also unclear if this only takes place inside his head. As the novel progresses, he -and by proxy the readers he speaks to- becomes increasingly confused between reality and imagination. There are several occasions within the novel where he might be experiencing visual and auditory hallucinations, common to certain types of Dementia, or he might be narrating a real experience. I enjoyed the way Pregelj refuses to patronise his readers and leaves the interpretation up to them.

Some of the classic tropes of Dementia narratives set in care facilities are absent here. There’s very little evidence of residents being infantilised. In fact, the narrator goes out of his way to emphasise his independence and the good relationships he has with staff members. He does talk at length about the physical aspects of ageing and deterioration. He describes the effects old age has had on his body including weight loss and incontinency. I was also glad to see one of the first explorations of sex between older people living with Dementia I’ve come across during my reading. However, Pregelj avoids language loss as an associated issue. The narrative voice is strong and coherent throughout the text. 

As the title would suggest A Chronicle of Forgetting is primarily a book concerned with memory; how memory is lost, what we remember and how accurate our memories are. It’s a beautiful, meandering gentle read which left me more hopeful than most Dementia narratives do. There’s a real sense of urgency running through this narrative. The man is not naïve. He knows he’s losing his grasp on reality, but he chooses not to panic and to make the most of every minute he has left. 

“Forgetting will swallow up my memories, bit by bit, until eventually I forget who I am, where I came from and why I’m here. But before that happens, I hope that for a few moments I’ll be able to put the world around me out of my mind and, without fear, sail away to somewhere else.”

A Chronicle of Forgetting was published by the Slovene Writers’ Association in 2019 

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“Turn of Mind” by Alice LaPlante

Turn of Mind was the first novel to win the Wellcome Book Prize, back in 2011. It was also one of the first of a number of novels and stories which used the conceit of Dementia as a vehicle for investigating a murder within a crime fiction context. As such, it’s a really interesting example of Dementia being explored in fiction. The plot is reasonably simple. Dr Jennifer White, a once highly gifted surgeon, has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. She finds her friend Amanda stabbed to death and is horrified to discover four of her fingers have been so expertly removed they could easily be, (no pun intended), her own handiwork. Jennifer can’t remember killing her friend, but she can’t be sure she didn’t do it either and suspicion naturally falls upon her. She doesn’t entirely understand the situation and therefore doesn’t know how to react appropriately.

“My guess is that a smile would be inappropriate. Fear might not be.”

I’ll not give away any spoilers because this is an exceptionally well-written, twisty and addictive crime fiction read. You’ll want to enjoy it for yourself without knowing how the story turns out. What I will say is that LaPlante is utterly convincing writing in Jennifer’s voice. The novel gives us such a great insight into what it’s like for a person to be so confused, she no longer even knows what she’s capable of. Jennifer is driven by the desire to piece the events together and find out what’s actually happened. She begins to keep a notebook of facts and this becomes a narrative device effectively employed by LaPlante to fill in the gaps in Jennifer’s memory, keeping the reader clear about the chain of events and timings. We are also given snippets of conversations between Jennifer and her children, and live-in caregiver Magdalena, though increasingly Jennifer is unclear who these people are, and the reader is also unsure which of them are to be trusted. Jennifer suspects everyone, even herself and as we’re following the story from her perspective, we are also encouraged to be distrustful too. Jennifer’s narrative slips in and out of different time periods; memories mixing with facts and perceptions so it’s almost impossible to know what is true.

I really enjoyed this novel. I couldn’t put it down. It’s one of the few examples of Dementia fiction where I found the plot utterly compelling and just as interesting as the characterisation. The Dementia aspect of Turn of Mindcould easily have been reduced down to a simple conceit, nothing more than a clever device for writing crime fiction. However, LaPlante has clearly done her research and both the voice and characterisation of Jennifer is utterly believable. This is a very realistically drawn character living with Dementia who is also caught up in an intriguing story. It’s easy to see why the novel impressed the Wellcome Prize judges.

Turn of Mind was published by Vintage in 2011 

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“Ghosts” by Dolly Alderton

Ghosts is award-winning author and journalist, Dolly Alderton’s debut novel. It’s not the sort of book I’d normally turn to -a kind of Bridget Jones-style take on contemporary dating with lots of pop culture references, romance and a little bit of pathos on the side- and yet, I have to say I really enjoyed it. It’s a quick read, and for the most part, quite light but it includes several really tender moments which made me stop in my tracks. The novel follows food writer Nina, as she turns thirty two and attempt to navigate the world of online dating whilst the majority of her friends are having babies and settling into married life. The thing which make Ghosts a little different from other books of this type I’ve read, is Nina’s relationship with her parents. Her mother, aged 65, appears to be having a rather late version of a midlife crisis. She’s changed her name and suddenly developed an interest in feminism and philosophy. Her father, aged 77, is showing signs of dementia. Though the 

novel shies away from using the kind of specific terminology usually found in dementia narratives, Bill’s prognosis is very apparent in his behaviour: he wanders back to his childhood home, he doesn’t recognise friends and family members, he becomes increasingly irritable.

I was not expecting to be so moved by Alderton’s portrayal of Bill and the way his wife and daughter react to his condition. It’s tenderly drawn and incredibly accurate. There is a real sense of Bill’s frustration. He’s an intellectual who is used to being respected and listened to. His constant refrain throughout the novel is “nobody’s listening. Nobody’s taking me seriously.” He’s aware enough to know he is being infantilised but too confused to realise that the things he’s saying are increasingly nonsensical. I thought Alderton perfectly captured the early stages of a dementia diagnosis when the person is aware that something isn’t quite right. I also loved her observation that Bill, with dementia, was not less like himself, but rather a kind of condensed version of himself with his personality, interests and affectations much more concentrated than before. I’ve noticed this happening with several people I’ve known personally but never been able to put words to the phenomena before.

I also thought Alderton was particularly strong in her descriptions of how Bill’s wife reacts to his condition. At first Nancy seems incredibly blazé and sometimes dismissive. She argues constantly with her husband and doesn’t seem to take his dementia seriously. As Bill’s illness develops and they’re forced to source a carer to help them manage, Nancy begins to articulate her anger and fear. There’s a wonderful, very believable scene, where she speaks honestly about her fear of losing both her husband and her own sense of self. She doesn’t know who she’ll be without him. She’s had hopes for their retirement that she knows will never come to pass now.

These same notions of hope deferred and identity re-imagined are best explored in the character of Nina. Alderton writes Nina as an incredibly believable thirty something juggling career, relationship, friends and family responsibility. As her father’s condition declines she’s forced to re-imagine her relationship with him. She can no longer turn to him for support and solace. She is now her father’s carer. It is hard for her to accept this role reversal and the realisation that her father might not be there to walk her down the aisle or to meet his grandchildren. The future will be different from how Nina has imagined in.

I wasn’t expecting to enjoy Ghosts quite as much as I did, or to discover such a fantastically well-drawn description of an intellectual man, living with dementia, a character I don’t often come across. 

Ghosts was published by Fig Tree in 2020 

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“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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“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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“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