Still Alice

Alice is a phsycology teacher at Harvard when she starts experiencing memory loss and disorientation. Alice first writes it off as menopause, but after visiting a neuroscientist, she is diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's Disease. Being only 51, she feels alone in her situation. Her husband is too scared to spend much time with her, afraid of seeing the disease at work. There are no therapy sessions for the patient, only for their loved ones, and all her colleagues keep as far away from her as possible, uncomfortable with her situation.
As Lisa Genova writes about the rapid decent from top professor at Harvard to the mother who doesn't know her kids, she gets as far into the mind of Alice as possible. Many times while reading this touching novel, I would completely forget it was written in third person. I would be reading or two hours straight, leave the book for a few minutes and come back shocked to find she's and her's where I thought I had been reading I's and Me's. I also liked how at the end of the book, near the end of Alice's painful trials, there is peace. Yes, Alice does not know who her daughters are, but there is no panic. Just an acceptance that, although she does not recognize these people, they are nice, and she likes them.