Tea & A Good Book Brewing- Installment 33, Still Alice

I loved this month's book, Still Alice, and found it to be very poignant, layered with emotions and feelings that were both real and captivating.

The subject of Alzheimer's Disease is a difficult one, for most of us have seen it's ravaging effect on loved ones and know just how incurable and irreversible the disease is.

Here is something that steals the very essence of a person- memory, personality, abilities to work and function- and leaves a shell in it's wake.

Or is it a shell?

Maybe, when the ravages of the disease have done their worst we have lost one thing, and gained another.

Maybe, we're still Alice.

I like to think of this post as more of a book discussion than a book review, so I am going to make use of the Reader's Club Guide for Still Alice found in the back of the book in much the same way we might do if we could all sit around with our cups of tea and talk about the book in person.

And since I don't like to do all the talking, I can't wait to hear your input!

1. When Alice becomes disoriented in Harvard Square, a place she's visited daily for twenty-five years, why doesn't she tell John? Is she too afraid to face a possible illness, worried about his possible reaction, or some other reasons? 

Sometimes ignoring things, or keeping them to ourselves, is a way of denying reality. We think that if we don't voice "the thing" then maybe it didn't really happen, and I think that may have been what was going on here.

2. Do you find irony in the fact that Alice, a Harvard professor and researcher, suffers from a disease that causes her brain to atrophy? Why do you think the author, Lisa Genova, chose this profession? How does her academic success affect Alice's ability, and that of her family, to cope with Alzheimer's?

There is definitely an irony here, and I think the author chose the protagonist and her profession on purpose to make it very real to her readers just what the disease does, regardless of profession or class. Watching Alice go from being a professor at Harvard and a world-renowned expert in linguistics to someone who didn't know her own children made the gulf between the two worlds all the more devastating, but in reality the loss is devastating for anyone. I think her academic success made it harder for her family to grasp that she could have Alzheimer's, but in a second irony, it was the disease that finally allowed certain levels of connection with her children.  

3. When Alice's three children, Anna, Tom, and Lydia, find out they can be tested for the genetic mutation that causes Alzheimer's, only Lydia decides she doesn't want to know. Why does she decline? Would you want to know if you had the gene?

Maybe Lydia feels that life is too short to spend it knowing you are destined for Alzheimer's. Maybe she wasn't going to allow the possibility of tomorrow's troubles steal today's joys. I can see the pros and cons of knowing vs. not knowing if you had that particular gene, but one of the biggest pros of knowing might be the possibility of early-prevention.

4. Were you surprised at Alice's plan to overdose on sleeping pills once her disease progressed to an advanced stage? Is this decision in character? Why does she make this difficult choice? If they found out, would her family approve?

I was not necessarily surprised that she would come to that conclusion, and I think it was in character with who she was and how she ran her life, making choices that made sense on a psychological level and charting your own course. She made the decision because she didn't want to out-live her usefulness and also, I think, as a way of sparing her family from a very heavy burden. I don't think her family would have approved, but maybe more because they valued her life than that they disagreed with the ethics behind taking one's own life.

5. "One last sabbatical year together. She wouldn't trade that in for anything. Apparently, he would." (p. 226) Why does John decide to keep working? Is it fair for him to seek the job in New York considering Alice probably won't know her whereabouts by the time they move? Is he correct when he tells the children she would not want him to sacrifice his work? 

I think John feel that he need to keep working to keep any semblance of normality and sanity in his life. It may not have been "fair" for him to seek the "dream job" in New York, but here again I think he fle it was his only option if his life was to continue even after Alice's was over, so to speak. If he was talking about the Alice of yesterday when he said that she would not want him to sacrifice his work, then yes, but the alice of today? As her priorities changes in the face of her disease, she  wanted other's priorities to change as well, and the new Alice wanted his sacrifice.

6. Why does Lisa Genova choose to end the novel with John reading that Amylix, the medicine that Alice was taking, failed to stabilize Alzheimer's patients? Why does this cause John to cry?

Not all stories have happy endings, and this book closes with the grim fact that Alzheimer's does not. Alice's life was on an irreversible course and Amylix was another hope down the drain. John's tears show that he has a heart for Alice, even though you don't always see it, and that he also feels agony over her future and the future of others with the same genes, including his daughter Anna.

Entering into Alice's world through the pages of this book gave me a very real (and frightening) glimpse of what it would feel like to be diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's, and yet I am left to imagine while others are left to live the reality.

And for tonight, I am praying that their reality might be one of peace.