《keeper》是2010年Random House US出版社出版的圖書，作者是Andrea Gillies。
基本介紹
- 書名：keeper
- 作者：Andrea Gillies
- 出版社：Random House US出版社
- ISBN：9780307719119
內容簡介
Five years ago, Andrea Gillies— writer, wife, and mother ofthree—seeing that her husband's parents were struggling to cope,invited them to move in. She and her newly extended familyrelocated to a big Victorian house on a remote, windswept peninsulain the far north of Scotland, leaving behind their friends and allthat was familiar; hoping to find a new life, and newinspiration for work.
Her mother-in-law Nancy was in the middle stages of Alzheimer'sDisease, and Keeper charts her journey into dementia, its impact onher personality and her family, and the author's researches intowhat dementia is. As the grip of her disease tightens,Nancy's grasp on everything we think of as ordinary unravels beforeour eyes. Diary entries and accounts of conversations with Nancytrack the slow unravelling. The journey is marked byfrustration, isolation, exhaustion, and unexpected black comedy.For the author, who knew little about dementia at the outset, thelearning curve was steeper than she could have imagined. The mostpernicious quality of Alzheimer’s, Gillies suggests, is that theloss of memory is, in effect, the loss of one’s self, andAlzheimer’s, because it robs us of our intrinsic self-knowledge,our ability to connect with others, and our capacity forself-expression, is perhaps the most terrible and most dehumanizingillness. Moreover, as Gillies reminds us, the effects ofAlzheimer’s are far-reaching, impacting the lives of caregivers andtheir loved ones in every way imaginable.
Keeper is a fiercely honest “glimpse into the dementia abyss”—anendlessly engrossing meditation on memory and the mind, on family,and on a society that is largely indifferent to the far-reachingravages of this baffling disease.
