THE THINGS WE KEEP (Sally Hepworth)

This is a scary book.  It will remind you of Lisa Genova's Still Alice, which is also about a woman with early onset Alzheimer's.  Like Alice, Anna has family support, to an extent, and the reader experiences the progression of the disease through Anna's eyes and mind.  Anna is just 38 years old when the story begins and has recently moved to a nursing home.

Unlike Still Alice, The Things We Keep is written from the point of view of several other characters, Eve and her daughter, Clementine, as well as Anna's.  Eve is a recent widow whose husband, Richard, was a financial manager convicted of cheating his clients out of millions of dollars with a Ponzi scheme.  After his suicide Eve and their daughter, Clementine, were left penniless and disgraced to face the contempt and hatred of Richard's victims, most of whom are convinced that Eve herself shares responsibility for Richard's crimes.  Eve meets Anna when she is hired as cook and cleaner at a private nursing home in her daughter's school district, where Clem can continue to attend the same school.  From Clem's narration we see the stress and anguish of a 7-year-old child missing her father, outcast and bullied by her classmates, and desperately trying to hang on to memories of her past life with both of her parents.

This novel raises a lot of questions about what is "right" for victims of Alzheimer's.  Should they be allowed, as adults, to engage in adult relationships (even if they do need to be reintroduced to people every day)?  Can people with Alzheimer's fall in love?  Where should the line be drawn between physical safety and emotional well-being? Anna's story is one that we all hope that neither we nor a loved one will ever have to live.  Hepworth presents us with 2 women of similar age and intelligence.  Each suffers a devastating setback in life.  One has the means and opportunity to fight her way back to some semblance of a normal life, always defined by her past, while the other faces the reality that her past is disappearing and her future is nonexistent.  I'm still thinking about this book.  I would highly recommend it.  I may add more to this review later on!