Book Review: Still Alice

By Rosa Schmidt, Oakland Public Library Director

Yesterday I watched the movie “Still Alice” starring Julianne Moore. Moore plays Alice Howlan; Harvard professor, gifted researcher and lecturer, wife, and mother of three grown children. At only fifty years of age, Alice has begun to forget words and become disoriented. She has, what is fast-becoming as frightening a diagnosis as any Cancer… Early-Onset Alzheimer’s disease.

This movie is based on the book, “Still Alice”, by Lisa Genova. Genova gives us a hauntingly accurate portrayal of a young woman’s slow but inevitable loss of memory and connection with reality. Told from Alice’s perspective, her story is at once heartbreaking, inspiring and terrifying. Connection with the characters; Alice, her husband John and their three children, is much greater when reading this book than the visual interpretation of the movie allows. I personally felt more inspiration from the characters while reading the book than I did viewing the movie.

“Still Alice” was published in January of 2009, the movie was released in January of 2015. The Oakland Public Library has both the book and the DVD available for check out.

“Still Alice” is both a moving novel and an important story to tell. Interest in this story is timely as the month of June is Alzheimer’s & Brain Awareness Month. 47 million people are living with Alzheimer’s and other dementias. @ https://www.facebook.com/actionalz and https://mybrain.alz.org you can learn more about this disease and ways that you can raise awareness.