Product Description

In "Remind Me Who I Am, Again," Linda Grant tells the story of her mother's gradual but devastating mental deterioration, her diagnosis as a victim of Alzheimer's disease, and her family's struggle to come to terms with the catastrophic impact of the disease. Iimmensely moving, at times darkly comic, and searingly honest, it combines biography and memoir in a unique examination of the profound questions of identity, memory, and autonomy that dementia raises.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #23739 in Books
• Published on: 1999-03-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 307 pages

Review
As her mother falls victim to the increasing ravages of Multi-Infarct Dementia - 'there were little holes in her brain, real holes in the grey matter where the memory of her life used to be' - Linda Grant comes to realize that 'memory... is everything, it's life itself'. It is not just her poor bewildered parent whose individuality is disappearing into those holes, but Grant's links to her past, her ancestors, her heritage. This moving, perceptive and fascinating book is in part an attempt to nail down a family history. It is also Grant's honest account of how she coped with her mother's heartbreaking and frustrating condition after a lifetime of friction between them. (Kirkus UK)

British journalist and novelist Grant (Sexing the Millennium, 1994) fashions a stylish, poignant memoir of her mothers losing battle with an insidious form of dementia.Grant divides her text into 27 unnumbered sections, beginning with a nightmarish shopping excursion with her mother Rose to buy a dress for a family wedding in 1996, and ending with a lyrical paean to memory (the Wandering Jew of our physical selves). A brief Afterword contains an update on her mothers continuing decline. Rose suffers from MID (Multi-Infarct Dementia), a disease characterized by continual minor strokes that, in her case, have destroyed her short-term memory. Grant chronicles the struggles that she and her sister go through to care for their mother, first in her own apartment and then, finally, in a custodial home. Grant, a wonderful writer, has assembled many touching episodes, many remarkable observations. She remembers being embarrassed and disgusted by her father (who sold supplies to hairdressers); she regrets not paying attention in her youth to the family stories of her elders; she recalls with bemusement her fathers sudden confession of an encounter with a prostituteand her mothers placid acceptance (he had given her earrings to soften the news, and jewelry easily outweighed a sexual infidelity); she realizes the wisdom of a friends comment that Your mother has become your daughter. Even in the darkness of her disease, Rose continues to surprise Grant: she follows the O.J. Simpson trial, grieves at the death of Princess Di, and retains her tasteful fashion sense. Most affecting are Grants accounts of her wrenching decision to institutionalize her mother. When they finally leave her in a facility, she wonders: What crime have we perpetrated, bringing her to this terrible place? Less effective are summaries of discussions about dementia with an administrator of the facility.A graceful and loving meditation on the inevitability of decline, on the wonder of memory. (17 b&w photos) (Kirkus Reviews)

Customer Reviews

Funny
This story is highly entertaining, witty and full of life. A great book to enlighten people whose lives have been touched by vascular dementia.

Memory as Bereavement
This is a beautifully written book, exploring the consequences of loss - the gradual loss of memory because of illness, the loss of time, of the past, of meaning. Linda Grant's mother had a particular form of dementia - Multi-Infarct Dementia - but this is a book which will have a meaning for anyone touched by Alzheimer's.

This is an exercise in archaeology - in taking people for granted, in wanting to be a teenager, to become an adult in your own right, to escape from your parents. It's only when you lose them you begin to ask the questions you wish had recognised while they were around. Roots. Identity. Where did the family come from, what was their history, how did they cope, how did they live?

Linda Grant's family were immigrants, fleeing from oppression in 19th century Europe. They reached England by accident or design, some on forged documents. They changed their names. Those who remained behind were consumed by the Holocaust. By the time Linda Grant began speculating on her roots, only her mother was left ... and her mother's memories were colander secure ... they were leaking away.

It is a sense of loss to which I can relate: I'm illegitimate; I lost half my roots before I was born. My mother died suddenly - no wasting disease for her. But I'd never talked to her, asked her the sorts of questions I wish I had. How many of us do ask the questions? How many of us do take the time to inquire, to treat our parents' and grandparents' lives and histories as significant?

Linda Grant, and countless thousands of others, have to endure watching a loved one ebb away. It's as if they fade, become invisible.

This is a book on which you can hang your heart and emotions. It is never clawingly sentimental. It does not explore the practicalities of coping. But it does ask essential questions about how we value ourselves and our families: our identities, our 'selfs', are built from memories, are cemented together by memories and personal histories.

You do not need to be touched by dementia to find this book valuable. It is, quite simply, a beautiful book about family, about family history, and about the discovery of self.

Slightly depressing book by a brilliant writer
Linda Grant is a fine author and, I think, a brilliant writer, but, unlike other reviewers, I did find this book mildly depressing - perhaps because there was no happy outcome for any of the figures in the book - indeed no happy outcome would be possible.

Grant's confusion about the veracity of her past - were the stories, handed down oral traditions, about the various members of her family and incidents of her childhood - true? - interpretations according to the teller? - utterly fabricated? was an interesting angle which must chime with many of us - how can we ever know the truth of much of what we are told about our background and childhood, especially when, as in Grant's case, there is an almost pathological need in her mother to present things in the most acceptable (to herself) light and not "tell everyone our business".

I empathised with Grant's anger and frustration with the Social Services and their appalling 'Catch 22' policies, and with her frustrated irritation with her demented mother - a mother, moreover, who has not been a great mother or even a particularly loving one and who is consequently difficult for Grant herself to love. I appreciated her honesty about this, but found Margaret Forster's novel on a similar theme, "Have the Men had Enough?" more moving.