Still Alice

 Title: Still Alice

Author: Lisa Genova

Number of Page: 336

Publisher: Pocket Books

Alice Howland, happily married with three grown children and a house on the Cape, is a celebrated Harvard professor at the height of her career when she notices a forgetfulness creeping into her life. As confusion starts to cloud her thinking and her memory begins to fail her, she receives a devastating diagnosis: early onset Alzheimer's disease. Fiercely independent, Alice struggles to maintain her lifestyle and live in the moment, even as her sense of self is being stripped away. In turns heartbreaking, inspiring and terrifying, Still Alice captures in remarkable detail what's it's like to literally lose your mind...

Review:

Can you imagine how a woman with excellent memory and reputable position as Professor in top university lost her very own best quality? It was a cruel fate when Alice Howland found out that she had Alzheimer's. Through pages of this book, I felt helpless reading about Alice condition which grew worse and worse. Every single scenes when she could not recall things especially during important events were so painful to read. For me, being independent is a thing I always strive for. I just could not imagine what I would feel when I need assistance just for doing basic things.

It's very hard to say bad things about this kind of book. It's sad, it's very informative, it makes the readers grow more empathetic. But, the narrative and the prose are so boring. I'm not sure what's wrong with it. Maybe not enough variations in describing the main character's emotions? I don't know. I feel detached from Alice most of the time.

I will say this is one of the best portrayal of Alzheimer's I have ever read. It is a scary disease. For a person to lose memories, it is like losing his entire identity. Too sad.

3/5