Author: Rowan Coleman
Pages: 384 Pages
Publisher: Ebury Press
The Blurb
The name of your first-born. The face of your lover. Your age. Your address…
What would happen if your memory of these began to fade?
Is it possible to rebuild your life? Raise a family? Fall in love again?
When Claire starts to write her Memory Book, she already knows that this scrapbook of mementoes will soon be all her daughters and husband have of her. But how can she hold on to the past when her future is slipping through her fingers…?
Original, heartwarming and uplifting, The Memory Book is perfect for fans of Jojo Moyes.
(Amazon Blurb)
The Review
Meet Claire. She is in her 40s. She is married with two daughters, Caitlyn and Esther and she has early onset Alzheimer’s Disease (AD).
The Memory Book by Rowan Coleman is the heartbreaking story of Claire Armstrong who is battling with a degenerative illness that she has inherited from her father’s side of the family. Every day she wakes up unsure whether she will have a good or bad day; whether she will be lucid in the present or lingering in the past; whether or not her mind will be able to recognise her loved ones.
The multi-perspective story explores the debilitating effects of AD on not only the patient but also on the patient’s family and loved ones. We see how Ruth, Claire’s mother has to watch her daughter go through the same regression that her beloved husband went through before he succumb to the disease.
We watch Caitlyn as her life mimics her mother’s life when she was in her early 20s. Her struggle seems all the more brutal because she needs her mother now more than ever but only sees her own problems as an extra burden on a family already struggling under the weight of their circumstances.
And then there is Greg, Claire’s husband who watches his wife become a stranger on a daily basis. She forgets who he is, what connection he has to her and most hurtfully that he is the love of her life. Greg continually gets lost in the fog of Claire’s condition and it is truly heartbreaking.
I don’t claim to know a lot about Alzheimer’s Disease but what I do know is that it is a wretched disease not only for the person who has been diagnosed with it but also for their family. What Coleman has managed to do with such acute verisimilitude is to beautifully present a heartbreaking yet heart warming story of a family fighting to come to terms with a diagnosis that does not have a positive outcome. It is this skill and tenacity of storytelling that made this book a real eye-opener and a privilege to read. If you haven’t read this book then add it to your nightstand pile of books immediately.
The Memory Book by Rowan Coleman is available for purchase.
Follow Rowan Coleman (@rowancoleman) on Twitter and for more information visit her official website www.rowancoleman.co.uk.
For more titles from Ebury Publishing (@EburyPublishing) please visit the official website www.eburypublishing.co.uk.