Still Alice Review

When someone is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease we often here about how family and caregivers dedicate their lives to helping them. They wait and watch as a loved one gradually slips away and can no longer recognise their husbands, wives and children and are no longer capable of undertaking the most simple tasks like going to the toilet or remembering to eat. We also often here from doctors, scientists and researchers who try to explain the gradual decline of the brain of those experiencing dementia and the constant hunt for a cure. However, it is rare to hear the story of what it is actually like to live with this disease from the point of view of the person who has it.

This is the insight The New York Times bestselling author, Lisa Genova, offers us through her novel Still Alice. Alice Howland is a professor of psychology at Harvard University; she has a husband and three grown up children but, at the early age of fifty she is diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s.

The novel is written with Alice as the narrator of the story and it shows how she must re-evaluate her life to deal with this disease. She can no longer work, go outside on her own and for the first time in her life she is not the one in control. Genova uses a descriptive writing technique to explore the thoughts and feelings which are all too common to those with dementia; feelings of isolation, fear, embarrassment and detachment. In the beginning it is hard to get a grip with the story as Alice is often slipping in and out of what is real and what is not but, by the end this just illustrates the constant struggle Alzheimer’s patients have to remain in the present and to retain who they really are for as long as possible.