When Sue Miller's father fell victim to Alzheimer's disease, her world plunged into crisis. Both as a daughter and as a writer, she was forced to bend to the disease's unrelenting course, and watch her father's memory slip away. As a daughter, she was tormented by the slow loss of her father's faculties, and frustrated by her attempts to care for him. As a writer, she was inspired by the problem of how to make a true account of someone's life coalesce out of the dying and tangled threads of memory. The result is a clear, compassionate portrait of two lives, a powerful and insightful journal of grieving, love, and transcendence.
Novelist Miller shows here that not only can she write a fine and sensitive tale, but she can read it as well. Step by loving step, she takes us painfully through her father's descent into the mindlessness that is Alzheimer's. We learn of the disease and of her father--scholar, minister, singer of silly songs, a gentle counterpart to her outspoken and moody mother. Miller demonstrates in word and tone the bewilderment, anxiety, sadness, and sense of futility felt by all those close to Alzheimer's patients. From the opening description of the phone call from the Massachusetts police who have found her father wandering to the closing explanation of why it took over 10 years to write this story, we are taken on an intensely personal and revealing journey by a wise and intelligent guide. J.B.G. (c) AudioFile 2003, Portland, Maine
San Francisco Chronicle...
"Deft, sincere and eloquent. . . With the care, restraint, and consummate skill that define her well-crafted and bestselling fiction, Sue Miller has now written a beautiful, compelling memoir about her father and his downward spiral into the demonic grasp of Alzheimer's disease."
Atlanta Journal-Constitution...
"Stunning. . . A remarkable yet self-effacing testament to the vagaries of memory . . . [Miller] turns a man's simple life and tragic death into a lively and unforgettable narrative."
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel...
"Deeply affecting . . . Like any memoir, this one is a way of bringing its subject back to life. . . . [This] beautifully written little book takes on the narrative power of first-rate fiction."
The Boston Globe...
"Beautifully written . . . Style and story are so seamlessly fused, and so perfectly balanced, that true clarity emerges."
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