Still Alice by Lisa Genova

She didn’t want to become someone people avoided and feared. She wanted to live to hold Anna’s baby and know it was her grandchild. She wanted to see Lydia act in something she was proud of. She wanted to see Tom fall in love. She wanted to read every book she could before she could no longer read.

Alice Howland is proud of the life she has worked so hard to build. A Harvard professor, she has a successful husband and three grown children. When Alice begins to grow forgetful, she initially dismisses it. But when she gets lost in her own neighborhood, she realizes that something is terribly wrong. Alice finds herself in the rapid downward spiral of Alzheimer’s disease. She is only 50 years old.

While Alice once placed her worth and identity in her celebrated academic career, she must now re-evaluate her relationship with her husband, her expectations of her children, and her ideas about herself and her place in the world.

Losing her yesterdays, with her short-term memory hanging on by a few frayed threads, she is living in the moment, taking life day by day. But she is still Alice.

Paperback, 2009

Goodreads: 4.32