"Still Alice" and "A letter to Sophie"

The library regularly receives new books. This week, we received “Still Alice” by Lisa Genova. This novel is the story of Alice Howland, happily married with three grown children, who 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.

The author, Lisa Genova, has an interesting background. She holds a Ph.D. in Neuroscience and has done research on the molecular etiology of depression, Parkinson's Disease, drug addiction, and memory loss following stroke. She is an online columnist for the National Alzheimer’s Association in the US. She also spends a considerable amount of time acting on stage in Boston and in local independent films. Lisa Genova has said about her novel "I received lots of email from people who thanked me for writing the book…For someone with Alzheimer's or a caregiver of a loved one with this, to tell me that I got it right, that it’s uncanny how true it all was, that they saw themselves all over the book, well that's the highest compliment I can get."

Another recent arrival is “A letter to Sophie: from her mum and dad’s private diaries” by Carolyn Martin, Ron Delizio and Sally Collings. This book is a day-by-day account of what Sophie Delizio and her family experienced as a result of her two terrible accidents; first when a car crashed into her Sydney childcare centre in 2003, leaving Sophie with horrific burns, and again in 2006 when she was hit by a car on a pedestrian crossing, resulting in broken ribs, punctured lungs, a broken jaw and collarbone, brain injuries and spinal fractures. In the preface to this book, Sophie’s mother, Carolyn Martin, says “We have written this book to give an insight into the roller coaster of emotions experienced by both patients and their families, to put a very real face on a picture that for many is hard to imagine, and to say thanks again to the teams that helped to get us in and out of the front doors of two hospitals.” You can listen to a moving interview Sophie’s parents did with ABC Radio 666 Canberra breakfast presenter Ross Solly via the ABC website.