Andrea Gillies

Keeper by Andrea Gillies is a thorough look at the emotional and financial cost of caring for a person with Alzheimer's that includes a good bit of writing about the science behind the disease. I came away from it thinking that good institutions really are the best place for people so afflicted. In the case of Gillies' mother in law, Nancy wanted constant motion. Gillies could have spent a solid 5 hours caring for her, trying to amuse her taking her on walks and to a restaurant for apple show more pie, but when they got home and Gillies put Nancy in a chair and went to make coffee upon her return Nancy was bemoaning the fact that she never did anything with her life but sit in a chair. She never got to go anywhere. Like the man in the movie Memento Nancy had no short term memory, she was unable to make new memories, and she really had no idea what had happened in her life 10 minutes ago. She was also losing her long term memory and worse yet, her emotional control. She was verbally and physically abusive of everyone in the family, suspicious, dirty (she would dump her whole dinner, or worse yet, the contents of her toilet in the bookcase). Being in a home with others and constant care gave her the stimulation and discipline she needed. Gillies complains of finally succumbing to "Caregiver Dementia" herself, she was deeply depressed and thought of death, her children knew Granny had dementia but still couldn't help but be hurt when she attacked them. This is no way for people to live, but we put such praise toward people who are willing, and able, to keep their older loved ones at home we don't see that this is not always the best situation for anyone. Not a cheerful book, but a very honest one. It won both the 2009 Wellcome Trust Book Prize, the United Kingdom's popular science writing award and the 2010 Orwell Prize. I can see why. show less

So many memoirs suffer from simplistic writing, a lack of reflection, or anger that reflects not enough emotional distance from the memories.
This memoir has none of those problems, which is amazing considering the difficulty of Gillies' subject - two or more years of living with and caring for her mother in law with severe Alzheimers. The writing is beautiful, starkly honest, unafraid of all the grim details of the illness. She's in touch with all her own feelings, including anger, but show more she's able to transform these feelings into art.
So many memoirs also fall down when the writers try to integrate their research into the story, so that every other chapter becomes a dry recitation. Somehow Gillies avoids this too. The whole book is engrossing, powerful - one of the best memoirs I've ever read. show less

The White Lie is a story of a family's inability to be truthful with itself. It is about repressed emotion, appearances, conventionality and that most British of things, embarassment. Michael, the narrator, admits to being dead from the start, and he tells his tale slowly, hesitantly, picking through the motives and emotions of his family for clues. Although there is a mystery - the shadows and secrets around the real events of Michael's death - this is not a whodunnit in the conventional show more sense. It is possible to work out at least some of the truth of it quite early on; that isn't what keeps the reader engaged. Rather, it is the manner of the telling, the rich detail of observation, and the oppressive atmosphere of the family in its ancestral place that make this an enthralling read. If you love a good murder mystery, it could be a disappointment: this is a book that reveals the hidden, pale underside of human motives, and it does that superbly well. show less

I first came across Andrea Gillies in the Family section of the Guardian, sharing an extract from her journal of her time looking after her mother-in-law, who was in the advanced stages of suffering from Alzheimer's. The piece aroused the ire of many a sensitive Grauniad reader, who felt Gillies was invading her mother-in-law's privacy in setting down plainly the messy reality of mental degeneration. How you are supposed to prepare to deal with an illness if no one talks about it in any show more detail, I have no idea.

The journal eventually evolved into Keeper, a memoir-cum-science-book spanning the three years Gillies spent looking after Nancy, moving to a large house on the coast with her husband, their three children, Nancy, and Nancy's husband Morris. Gillies does not pull her punches: the harsh reality of the effects of Alzheimer's, from the aimless wandering to physical violence to embarrassing public nudity, are all set down unflinchingly. So, too, are the emotions Nancy's behaviour provokes in Gillies and, to a lesser extent, her family; she explores not just the practical, clinical realities of the illness, but also the impact that it has on those who are caring.

Interspersed with the personal perspective are reflections on the impact of dementia on art and creativity in the "famous", and some truly excellent passages of 'popular science'. Gillies has clearly done her research, and perhaps more importantly, she has a real gift for conveying the scientific and clinical detail of what is happening to the patient as the disease progresses in terms that the average non-scientific reader can instantly relate to. I do slightly wish that she'd provided a bibliography, as she makes frequent reference in the text to the books that she reads about Alzheimer's, which seem to be of wildly varying quality and approach.

I was drawn to this in the first instance because of my own very slight experience of dementia - my paternal grandmother suffered from vascular dementia for several years, and her sister died of Alzheimer's; a lot of the descriptions of Nancy's behaviour rang very true when I remember their reactions to the world. But very early on in the book, Andrea Gillies highlights some crucial data points that show the very real need for more people to read this book, beyond those who have been directly affected: the ageing of the population, coupled with a dementia rate that is expected to double in the next 20 years, is leading towards an explosion in the numbers of dementia patients - and correspondingly, in the number of people who will have to care for them, in particular because the UK system is geared towards home care for as long as possible, something that Gillies sets out in heartrending detail.

Dementia is not sexy. It's messy. It's embarrassing. It's expensive. It's upsetting. But it's happening, and more and more of us are going to have to deal with it firsthand. I can think of no better preparation than to read Keeper. Highly recommended - not just by me, but by the judges of the inaugural Wellcome Prize for Science Writing, who gave it the nod despite it astoundingly attracting no reviews in any major UK newspaper. show less