Still Alice

Still Alice is a compelling debut novel about a 50-year-old woman's sudden descent into early onset Alzheimer's disease, written by first-time author Lisa Genova, who holds a Ph. D in neuroscience from Harvard University.


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...

I just finished reading this book and it was really good. It's a hard read, especially if you have someone close to you suffering with Alzheimers, as I do. I think it's a neccessary read too. It is written from the perspective of the Alzhiemers patient and conveys really well how it feels inside their heads. It really made me think of my Grandma and how the situations in the book applied to her. My grandma is 68 and is now in the moderately severe stage of Alzhiemers. I will share you with some quotes that really lingered in my mind for days to come.

"I am wife, mother and friend and soon to be grandmother. I still feel, understand and am worthy of the love and joy in those relationships." - Alice

"Don't panic or take it personally if we make mistakes, because we will. We will repeat ourselves, we will misplaces things and we will get lost. We will forget your name and what you said two minutes ago. We will also try our hardest to compensate for and overcome our cognitive losses." - Alice

"My yesterdays are disappearing, and my tomorrows are uncertain, so what do I live for? I live for each day. I live in the moment. Some tomorrow soon, I'll forget that I stood before you and gave this speech. But just because I'll forget it some tomorrow doesn't mean that I didn't live every second of it today. I will forget today but that doesn't mean that today didn't matter." - Alice

"I can't take watching you not knowing how to get dressed and not knowing how to work the television. If I'm in the labe, I don't have to watch you sticking post it notes on all the cabinets and doors. I can't just stay home and watch you get worse. It kills me." - John, her husband

"It's killing me, not you. I'm getting worse, whether you're home looking at me or hiding in your lab. You're losing me. I'm losing me. But if you don't take next year off with me, well, then, we lost you first. I have Alzheimer's. What's your fucking excuse." - Alice

"It's like you don't get that she's not gone yet, like you think her time left isn't meaningful anymore." - Alice's children