{"id":317,"date":"2021-02-15T11:15:39","date_gmt":"2021-02-15T11:15:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/?p=317"},"modified":"2021-02-15T11:15:39","modified_gmt":"2021-02-15T11:15:39","slug":"turn-of-mind-by-alice-laplante","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/2021\/02\/15\/turn-of-mind-by-alice-laplante\/","title":{"rendered":"“Turn of Mind” by Alice LaPlante"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Turn of Mind <\/em>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\u2019s 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\u2019s. 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\u2019t remember killing her friend, but she can\u2019t be sure she didn\u2019t do it either and suspicion naturally falls upon her. She doesn\u2019t entirely understand the situation and therefore doesn\u2019t know how to react appropriately.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy guess is that a smile would be inappropriate. Fear might not be.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ll not give away any spoilers because this is an exceptionally well-written, twisty and addictive crime fiction read. You\u2019ll 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\u2019s voice. The novel gives us such a great insight into what it\u2019s like for a person to be so confused, she no longer even knows what she\u2019s capable of. Jennifer is driven by the desire to piece the events together and find out what\u2019s 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\u2019s 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\u2019re following the story from her perspective, we are also encouraged to be distrustful too. Jennifer\u2019s narrative slips in and out of different time periods; memories mixing with facts and perceptions so it\u2019s almost impossible to know what is true.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I really enjoyed this novel. I couldn\u2019t put it down. It\u2019s 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 Mind<\/em>could 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\u2019s easy to see why the novel impressed the Wellcome Prize judges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Turn of Mind was published by Vintage in 2011 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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\u2019s a really interesting example of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":901,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[7,52,6,4,14],"class_list":["post-317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","tag-alzheimers","tag-crime-fiction","tag-family","tag-novels","tag-woman"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/901"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=317"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":318,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317\/revisions\/318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}