|
When her once-excellent-looking and witty novelist-mother got Alzheimer's, Eleanor Cooney went her from her beloved Connecticut home to California in order to care for her. In tense, intense prose, punctuated with the blackest of humor, Cooney documents the slow in away of her mother's mind, the powerful bond the two shared, and her own descent into drink and despair. But the coping mechanism that irrevocably serves this moving writer best is writing, the ability to bring to vivid life the memories her mother is losing. As her mother gropes in the gathering darkness for a grip on the world she once loved, succeeding only in magic sad fantasies of places and times with her late husband, Cooney revisits their right past. Death in Slow Motion becomes the mesmerizing tale of Eleanor's actual childhood, honest out of the pages of John Cheever; the daring and full of life mother she remembers; and a time that no longer exists for either of them.
|
 You Are Not Alone |
| Review Date: August 16, 2003 |
| Assessor: Charlotte Soliday, Tucson, AZ USA |
This book is a must read! You will laugh. You will weep. But if you have ever been a caregiver for a loved one with dementia of the Alzheimer's type, you will irrevocably know--really know--you are not alone. Someone out there(E.Cooney), knows just so what you are going through--all your feelings of sorrow and stress, all your frustration and guilt.
In person, I found I really needed to read this book. I thought there were no words to describe the intensity of the run into I went through with my beloved mother, who also had A.D. But E. Cooney's words do just that.
Her honest tale will amaze you as you hear your own voice echoing her view and emotions. You'll ride the roller-coaster of high expectations and low disappointments, high hopes and low regrets, in the land of Alzheimer's.
I wish I had had this book when I was caring for my mother. I knew of no one who could truly be with you our plight, not just when my mom lived with me, but also when I had to go her elsewhere. Though back then I might have been too exhausted to read more than a few pages each day, even that would've been such comfort and encouragement to my aching heart, because I wouldn't have felt so alone.
Over three years have passed since my mother died, and I am still processing grief over my loss and her sad decline. But in the pages of this book, I found a healing balm. Whether or not it was the author's intention, she has given me a gift for which I am truly grateful. Buy this book, and pray for a cure for this devastating disease! |
A powerful tale
|
| Review Date: March 15, 2003 |
| Assessor: , |
| Full of compellingly realistic details and infused with the ambivalence all middle-aged people must feel when faced with their parents' end, this book kept me up all night as I read it non-stop from commencement to end. After breakfast and a quick nap, I sat down and read the book all over again. This book isn't just for the children of people suffering from Alzheimer's; it's for all of us who have faced, are facing, or will face the aging and death of parents. I join the author in laughing and lament over this perfect human pickle. Thank you, Ms. Cooney, for writing this book. |
A reader with the attention span of a small soap dish...
|
| Review Date: March 27, 2003 |
| Assessor: Mike Downes, San Diego |
| I don't read as much as I should. For me to really end a book, it has to grab me and keep grabbing me, from start to end. The last books I've read have been Into Thin Air, The Perfect Storm and Touching The Void. Get the thought? I chose Ms. Cooney's book nearly exclusively because of the title. Though I have read maybe only a couple of hundred books in my LIFE, I'd have to say this is, by far, the best book I have ever read. Ms. Cooney is extraordinarily articulate. If questioned to describe an orange, Ms. Cooney would have 400 or so perfect adjectives and paint a more vivid depiction of an orange than anyone ever has. So, yes, the book grabbed me. And it changed me. Her perspectives, and more much, her compassion, altered the way I look at life and being, and the difference linking the two. I am a better man for having read this book. Mike Downes |
Ouch.
|
| Review Date: September 1, 2003 |
| Assessor: Peggy Vincent, Oakland, CA |
Realistic, harrowing, and profoundly honest tab of caring for someone heading down the steep slide of Alzheimer's. Author Cooney's grief when she realizes there's not anything she can do to prevent or slow down her mother's galloping dementia is stressful to read; I can't imagine what it must have been like to live it, especially as Cooney's mother was always elegant, talented, gracious, and witty. To watch her withering dependence and mix-up is horrific, and things only get worse when Mom moves into their house.
This is a very harrowing memoir, not only of the disease's gradual destruction of an party, but also what it can do to the caregivers. |
This book is a KNOCKOUT!
|
| Review Date: February 27, 2004 |
| Assessor: Robert Ross, Fort Bragg, CA United States |
| Lovely & fascinating piece of work. Her voice is so lucid, so deliberate, reminds me of what an ancient mentor advised me in my youth: "Full speed ahead, and strive for tone!" I loved the tale, sad as it is. I loved the author's willingness to really expose herself in order to honour her subject and craft. There wasn't a page in there that seemed like Ms. Cooney was hiding back behind it, it was all so up front...... And especially I loved the wonderful hilarious touching tough loose accurate lingo...... This is a wonderful piece of writing. |
|
No details are available for this manufactured goods
No video reviews found for this manufactured goods.
