Still Alice, by Lisa Genova

Still Alice is the story of a 50-year-old Harvard professor who is stricken with early-onset Alzheimer's disease. Though it's told in third person, the novel is Alice's story and reflects the degradation of her memory. Her husband, John, seems like a jerk at times, but that's probably because the reader is seeing things through Alice's eyes, and she is the ultimate unreliable narrator (though she's not really the narrator--you know what I mean). I'd love to read the same story from John's point of view; I'm sure it would be heartbreaking.

Lisa Genova is an Alzheimer's researcher, so I worried that this book would be more of a public service announcement than a work of literature. Fortunately, I was wrong. In addition to being informative, the book is very well written; this is far from a Lifetime disease-of-the-week movie. Alice's story is compelling without being saccharine, and Genova never spoon-feeds the reader. In one scene after her diagnosis, Alice enters a classrooms, sits down, and waits for the professor to show up. Eventually all the students leave, and the reader is left wondering: Is this Alice's own class that she has forgotten she is teaching? Is this a memory of Alice as a student? Is this a seminar she is attending? Much later in the book, we learn almost in passing that Alice went into her own class and sat down as though she were a student and not the professor. The reveal is almost an afterthought.

So anyway, this book is sad but sweet and well worth your time.