What readers think of Still Alice, plus links to write your own review.

This book is an amazing look at the life of a highly intelligent college professor who is diagnosed with Early Onset Alzheimer's Disease. It was so tragic reading of the impact on her life, how others change they way they treat her, and how her husband and children deal with it. She also wrote "Inside the O'Briens" which takes the same approach with Huntington's Disease. I loved it too.

I am living with my friend who is only 65 and over the last two years I have seen such a change in him. I have known him for 13 years and he is not the same man I knew since this disease started showing up in him about 3 years ago. This book shows and tells so much of where he is going now and how much we live through on a daily basis. He has been on Aricept but it does not seem to make a difference in the decline. We will be going to a new neurologist and asking about other meds. I recommend that whether you know someone who has dementia or Alzheimers, and even if you don't know someone....you must read this book for yourself and your friends and family because you never know when it is going to strike.

I decided to read Still Alice because the average reader rating is extremely high. I'd never heard of the book or the author but gave it a try. I cannot even recall the last time I felt this emotionally moved by a book - ever. Something about this story, this educated woman who is a mere 4 years older than I am slowly losing herself to Alzheimer's, touched my heart deeply. I found myself welling up with emotion several times while I read the book and then there was a moment towards the end where I had to stop reading because the tears in my eyes had completely obscured my vision. So, before I even finished the book, I bought a copy and sent it to my mother. Honestly, I just want to know if I am crazy or maybe just hormonal or - possibly - this is just the right book for me at the right time. Walking in the shoes of Alice was the perfect perspective for this story. Finishing this book has filled me with empathy for a disease I knew so little about when I started.

I decided to read Still Alice because of its many favorable reader reviews. I'd never heard of the book or the author but gave it a try. I cannot even recall the last time I felt this emotionally moved by a book - ever. Something about this story, this educated woman who is a mere 4 years older than I am slowly losing herself to Alzheimer's, touched my heart deeply. I found myself welling up with emotion several times while I read the book and then there was a moment towards the end where I had to stop reading because the tears in my eyes had completely obscured my vision. WTF? So, before I even finished the book, I bought a copy and sent it to my mother. Honestly, I just want to know if I am crazy or maybe just hormonal or - possibly - this is just the right book for me at the right time. Walking in the shoes of Alice was the perfect perspective for this story. Finishing this book has filled me with empathy for a disease I knew so little about when I started.

I am familiar with the condition, watching my MiL from early stages till death. While I felt Ms Genova explored many of the dynamics of the disease and the family and their reactions, I felt in ending the book when she did, she wimped out on the full reality of the condition. The sad fact of the eventual disappearance of the person until they are a mute, bedridden shadow of their former self means the reader is not taken on the full journey. While such an ending is sad it could have been alluded to in an epilogue. I found the epilogue in this book was not really an epilogue at all.

Well written - everyone should be made aware of the dynamics in dealing with anyone exhibiting the symptoms of Alz. disease. Important to understand & remember that they have feelings too, regardless of their ability to communicate. As a nurse I worked with Alzheimer patients & I read & reread this thought provoking book. You should read it too.

I thought this book had a lot of good information, and was intriguing in many ways. I particularly thought the daily quiz the protagonist set up to test herself and protect herself from overstaying her intellectual shelf life was terrific. If the author had had the courage to allow her heroine to die with dignity, I would have applauded the book. However, I found the ending jarringly false. Everyone was living happily ever-after, including the older daughter who was breezing through raising infant twins, while knowing she herself was going to suffer her mother's fate, and happily having bed-soiling mother live with her (with the help of one of those marvelous care-givers who seem to exist mostly between the covers of not-very-realistic novels). My mother and my mother in law both died of Alzheimer's, and they were not "still" the women they had been all their lives, even if they occupied the bodies that had once contained them. Had they been able to die with dignity three years before their ignominious deaths, the places they occupy in the memories of those left behind would have been far different.

This is a heart wrenching and heart warming story that takes us through the devastating diagnosis that Alice comes face to face with. It also lets us know how this affects all the other family members and how they find the strength to be supportive and loving of their wife and mom, while she becomes less cognitively present and aware of them. With Alzheimer's disease affecting so many families, this book has the potential to educate and sensitize future patients and caretakers. Thank you Lisa Genoa for this very realistic and helpful introduction to something which can affect any of us. It is always good to be prepared even as we hope we will never be in Alice's shoes.