{"id":367,"date":"2021-03-09T23:03:49","date_gmt":"2021-03-09T23:03:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/?p=367"},"modified":"2021-03-09T23:03:49","modified_gmt":"2021-03-09T23:03:49","slug":"may-by-naomi-kruger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/2021\/03\/09\/may-by-naomi-kruger\/","title":{"rendered":"“May” by Naomi Kruger"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Naomi Kruger\u2019s beautifully written debut novel May<\/em> is a story about how we remember the past, what we choose to hold on to and what must be let go. It centres around May, an elderly women living with dementia in a residential care facility. The novel is structured around a single day in May\u2019s life. May\u2019s own voice is the leitmotif running throughout the novel. After each chapter we hear fragmented snippets of her thoughts which allow us an insight into the confusion and cacophony of different memories and ideas all competing for May\u2019s attention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The chapters of the novel are narrated by a handful of different people who\u2019ve had an impact on May. We hear from her daughter, Karen, her grandson, Alex, May\u2019s husband, Arthur and Sana, the young female carer who\u2019s grown close to her in the nursing home. Each of them gives us a little more understanding of May\u2019s story and helps us piece together both who she was and who she now is. Kruger also slowly reveals a decades old mystery which May has become more and more obsessed with since her move into the nursing home. The multiple narrative voices work well here. They\u2019re each strong and developed enough to feel like complete stories in their own right. Though they patch together May\u2019s personal story, they also show how each of the characters has been influenced and impacted by their relationship with her. I particularly appreciated this. Often in dementia narratives, it falls to secondary characters to shape and establish the character living with dementia. Here the secondary characters have been just as impacted by encountering May as she is shaped by their testimonies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

May<\/em> is an exquisitely written novel. The prose is clean but warm. It doesn\u2019t sentimentalize the family\u2019s relationship with May or approach her illness too emotionally. However, the fondness is apparent, particularly in her grandson\u2019s and Sana\u2019s narratives. I loved the humour Kruger brought to the scenes which showcase interactions with the residents of the nursing home. May is also notable for its exploration of the fractured thought processes of someone living with advanced dementia. We are given multiple opportunities to see how May\u2019s thoughts have become confused and distorted. Kruger does a stellar job in translating this confusion into words. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

May was published by Seren Books in 2018 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Naomi Kruger\u2019s beautifully written debut novel May is a story about how we remember the past, what we choose to hold on to and what must be let go. It centres around May, an elderly women living with dementia in a residential care facility. The novel is structured around a single day in May\u2019s life. May\u2019s own […]<\/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":[5,30,6,88,4,17,14],"class_list":["post-367","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","tag-carers","tag-english","tag-family","tag-mystery","tag-novels","tag-residential-care-facility","tag-woman"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367","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=367"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":368,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367\/revisions\/368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}