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The Plot Thickens When the Drama of Dementia Becomes Entangled in Fiction
Authors like Tom Rachman and Iain Reid are bending reality in new and noteworthy novels about characters with memory loss / BY Nathalie Atkinson / June 15th, 2023
As the son of two psychologists, English-Canadian author Tom Rachman comes from a family that’s always been very interested in the mind, and his house is full of books on the brain and neuroscience. His new novel, The Imposters (out June 27), follows Dora Frenhofer, 73, a minor Dutch novelist living alone in London during COVID-19, who is writing what she knows will be her final book. Her mind is going, and in alternating chapters and diary entries, the reader follows Dora’s inexorable decline during the forced isolation of pandemic lockdowns.
“I’ve been fascinated with the brain, both how it works but also how the brain ages,” the London-born, Vancouver-raised writer explains. That’s in part what drew him to explore memory loss and loss of self. Suspended between reverie and fiction, the clever structure of The Imposters examines how, for example, authors create characters by projecting their imagination onto another person.
The self-doubt, uncertainty around perception and frustration of ravaged memories certainly make elderly protagonists with cognitive decline intriguing unreliable narrators. It’s only natural for writers to tap into the lyrical possibilities of non-linear narratives and shifting timelines inherent in this most ungraspable disease. The confusion and acts of imagination that accompany the personal experience of living with dementia are also akin to the fragments of ideas in fiction.
Consider the vocabulary of disorientation and deterioration in The Imposters – phrases like “finding words” and “plot shards and character lumps” – Rachman uses to describe the disorienting maze of Dora’s inner monologue. Authors, as part of the writing process, try out snippets of text, and that analogue makes dementia especially rich terrain for writers.
“The language and the words we choose is our interface between what we’re feeling and our sense of meaning and other people,” Rachman says. “One of the most painful parts of dementia is the gradual disintegration of that.” Usually, we see the disease through the eyes of a caregiver as they watch someone disappear, but Rachman thinks it must be even more anguishing for the patient. “It’s a kind of frightening, terrifying double isolation, because you’re not only losing your ability to manage, but you’re losing your ability to connect to people – what language fundamentally is.”
The Imposters is among new and noteworthy literary fiction that explores how memory is an integral part of identity. The novels do more than depict the medical or situational realities of dementia — they frame the complexity of an emotional response to illness while probing its dramatic potential with texture and delicacy, and all the knowledge and compassion of our expanded understanding of the disease.
Here are a few more books that illuminate the journey of dementia from within.
1The Librarianist In his melancholy and often funny new novel, the Portland, Ore.-based Canadian author, who won the Governor General Literary Award for Fiction with The Sisters Brothers, unpacks retired librarian Bob’s chance encounter with a confused elderly woman. A world of emotion opens up for him when he begins volunteering at her seniors centre, triggering reveries and revelations from his past.
In his melancholy and often funny new novel, the Portland, Ore.-based Canadian author, who won the Governor General Literary Award for Fiction with The Sisters Brothers, unpacks retired librarian Bob’s chance encounter with a confused elderly woman. A world of emotion opens up for him when he begins volunteering at her seniors centre, triggering reveries and revelations from his past.
2We Spread After her long-term partner dies and she suffers a fall, Penny, an aging artist, moves into a remote retirement residence in seemingly idyllic woods. In this work of philosophical suspense by the Kingston, Ont.-based writer (I’m Thinking of Ending Things), Penny’s growing suspicion, disorientation and unease has readers second guessing what’s happening to her, and whether malevolent forces or failing memory are responsible.
After her long-term partner dies and she suffers a fall, Penny, an aging artist, moves into a remote retirement residence in seemingly idyllic woods. In this work of philosophical suspense by the Kingston, Ont.-based writer (I’m Thinking of Ending Things), Penny’s growing suspicion, disorientation and unease has readers second guessing what’s happening to her, and whether malevolent forces or failing memory are responsible.
3Gone But Still Here The Ontario playwright and composer draws on her experience as her life partner’s caregiver for this novel – set between England, Canada and Trinidad – about a family witnessing the decline of a matriarch with Alzheimer’s. The story ventures into the mind of Mary, who lives in the past as she attempts to write a memoir about a long-ago lost love.
The Ontario playwright and composer draws on her experience as her life partner’s caregiver for this novel – set between England, Canada and Trinidad – about a family witnessing the decline of a matriarch with Alzheimer’s. The story ventures into the mind of Mary, who lives in the past as she attempts to write a memoir about a long-ago lost love.
4The SwimmersWhen the local pool closes for repairs, it has dramatic consequences for Alice, a retired lab technician who is in the early stages of dementia. The disruption to her daily routine not only takes away her solace, it contributes to her cognitive decline. As her Japanese-American daughter prepares to move Alice into a nursing home, fading memories unfold about her internment camp experience during the war and other remembrances.
When the local pool closes for repairs, it has dramatic consequences for Alice, a retired lab technician who is in the early stages of dementia. The disruption to her daily routine not only takes away her solace, it contributes to her cognitive decline. As her Japanese-American daughter prepares to move Alice into a nursing home, fading memories unfold about her internment camp experience during the war and other remembrances.
5Poguemahone While Dan visits his sister Una – who lives with dementia – at her nursing home in Margate, England, he recounts their memories, grudges and family saga as an epic and psychedelic free-verse monologue, complete with allusions to The Waste Land, E.E. Cummings and W.B. Yeats. The swirling tale – nearly 600 pages long – from the Booker-shortlisted Irish writer of The Butcher Boy has been called a 21st-century Ulysses.
While Dan visits his sister Una – who lives with dementia – at her nursing home in Margate, England, he recounts their memories, grudges and family saga as an epic and psychedelic free-verse monologue, complete with allusions to The Waste Land, E.E. Cummings and W.B. Yeats. The swirling tale – nearly 600 pages long – from the Booker-shortlisted Irish writer of The Butcher Boy has been called a 21st-century Ulysses.
6The Shimmering State An experimental new Alzheimer’s drug that contains happy personal memories chosen by patients becomes a sensation on the black market as people without dementia consume the pills, and other people’s recollections. The dreamlike story follows the treatment of two non-patients who abused Memorex and bond in rehab over a shared déja vu, after one of them steals his grandmother’s pills to see his late mother through his granny’s eyes.
An experimental new Alzheimer’s drug that contains happy personal memories chosen by patients becomes a sensation on the black market as people without dementia consume the pills, and other people’s recollections. The dreamlike story follows the treatment of two non-patients who abused Memorex and bond in rehab over a shared déja vu, after one of them steals his grandmother’s pills to see his late mother through his granny’s eyes.