Back to it with day six of the book challenge. So the book that I chose that makes me sad is Still Alice by Lisa Genova. This book follows the life of Alice Howland after she finds out that she has Alzheimer’s.
Synopsis: 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…
It was very interesting to see how she dealt with this disease. Alzheimers for me is a very scary disease and is actually my biggest fear. My grandmother had it and it was awful to see someone just deteriorate to the point of not knowing the people around her whom she had known and loved her entire life. To put yourself in those shoes and imagine how you would just disappear as a person is how this book is. You live through Alice losing herself. She forgets her routines and how to think and comprehend for basic daily tasks. She knows its happening and then she doesn’t know its happening and its really sad. Her family struggles through with her and her descent into nothingness. Along the way it happens to bring her daughter and her closer together.
There was a movie made based on this book and Julianne Moor played Alice. I saw the movie and I have to admit that she did an exceptional job, especially at the part where she gives a speech in Harvard University to celebrate that she is and will be her no matter what a disease has to say about it.
If you like sad reads (it really is a very good book, just hit home for me), you can find this book on Goodreads or Amazon and you can find Lisa Genova on Twitter. Stay tuned for more of the book challenge and I will talk to you soon bookworms!