Hello! I have a somewhat of a specific ask: I’m looking for books (or novellas or short stories) written from the perspective of an older person with dementia, or Alzheimer’s.
My grandma sadly has dementia and lately I have been thinking a lot about how the world looks from her perspective. It must be scary and confusing: I tell her we just did something, and she doesn’t rememeber and has to trust me on it. I remind her of important people from her life, and she doesn’t remember, has to just trust me on it. She gets memories weirdly melted together, creating events that never took place, or bizzarro verions of actual events, etc. In her own recollections events sometimes make no sense, becasue she remembers only parts of them – which must be disturbing, even though she acts as if she doesn’t see it (I can’t tell if she does). She exists almost outside of time, thinking that things that happened 40 years ago were just last month. She doesn’t recognize the “new” lamp in her room, because she bought it “only” 20 years ago, so she believes someone came during the night and changed it.
I would like to read something that shows this perspective, that really shows how the world looks from the perspective of a person in such a state. The more of the stuff I described above included, the better.
Thank you in advance!
by LadyKlepsydra
8 Comments
It’s not exactly on point, but Flowers for Algernon might be a good one
Elizabeth Is Missing by Emma Healey.
Murder mystery in which the main character has dementia. Fiction of course, so not necessarily a study of dementia itself, but I found it an interesting point of view and an entertaining read.
*We Spread* by Iain Reid. Full disclosure: I have not read this yet – it is on my TBR, but from what I have seen/heard about it, it contains a lot of first person POV of what you are looking for.
I’m very sorry about your grandmother. You might like Man Walks into a Room by Nicole Krauss. It’s about a younger man with memory loss due to a brain tumor, though.
Still Alice by Lisa Genova
I’m sorry about your grandma :’( And every morning the way home gets longer and longer (by Fredrik Backman) it’s very short but it helped me when my grandpa got his diagnosis
Still Alice” by Lisa Genova is a book you might like. It’s about a woman named Alice who has an early onset Alzheimer’s disease. The story follows her and her family as they face this challenge together. It’s a touching read that makes you think about what really matters.
Geneva by Richard Armitage. It’s slightly different in that it’s split into two narrators; one with premature Alzheimer’s symptoms, and her husband dealing with living with and caring for someone in decline. It’s part murder mystery, part medical thriller. The parts written from the female protagonist perspective are frightening and gut wrenching as she struggles to reconcile losing control of herself and a new terrifying reality.