I've been trying to process my grandfather's rapid decline from vascular dementia. He's turning 86 in a month. I write a lot myself and think a lot, especially because I used to work with dementia patients in allied healthcare work. Are there any stories from a person with dementia or any of its suptypes as a main character? Flowers for Algernon comes to mind, but the cognitively disabled MC has a sudden increase in cognitive capacity that then declines rapidly, so not quite the same.
Sorry for the ramblings all, I've been processing a lot. If not short stories/books/novellas with MC's with dementia, then anything that could perhaps help me gain insight into his condition from a non-scientific angle because I'm tired of my brain seeing my grandfather as a patient.
Thanks all and hope you're all doing well.
by FayePixie
8 Comments
Duddys version by mordecai richler.
Sorry to hear that, dementia is a very hard thing to deal with. Elizabeth is Missing by Emma Healey is the first book that comes to mind.
Still Alice by Lisa Genova includes a main character with early-onset Alzheimer’s. Several other characters with similar issues also appear briefly in the book.
Not as the main character, but Soucouyant by David Chariandy is about a young man caring for his mother with dementia. I haven’t read it since it came out, but remember it being really sad and beautiful.
Barney’s Version, by Mordecai Richler comes to mind.
Still Alice by Lisa Genova. I had to read it in college and it frogged me up pretty good as my grandmother was going through it. It’s a little different because the titular Alice has early onset dementia. The author is also a neuroscientist fwiw.
For Fiction: Elizabeth is Missing
But personally, I’d recommend Be With by Mike Barnes, it’s a beautiful memoir written as letters to a caregiver about him processing his mother’s decline via alzeimhers and dementia, it’s beautiful and poignant and might be just want you’re looking for!
Still Alice by Lisa Genova
Love and light to you and your family as you walk this difficult road ❤️