Someone Not Really Her Mother

It seems like ages since my last book review but it hasn’t even been a month. This one I just finished was a purely recreational read – meaning not assigned as a book club book. One of my fellow book clubbers recommended and loaned it to me and what an incredible little book by Harriett Scott Chessman. It is a novel of a woman with Alzheimer’s and her family. It kind of drove me crazy how all the details of the main character’s life are all jumbled and seem to be hiding just out of reach or just beyond the next corner but it is the story told mostly from her point of view that gives the novel such great depth and uniqueness. And I was SO mad about the ending…. until I’d had a day to think about it. It ended exactly the only way it could and in hindsight I love even how it ends. The characters are beautifully depicted through the shadows of the woman with Alzheimer’s and what a heart-wrenching portrayal of a story that is lived in reality by thousands of people every single day. I highly recommend this book. It is a short little book but at times not such an easy read; but what a great glimpse into life with such a horrible disease.