Skip to main content
PBS logo
 
 

Book Review of Still Alice

Still Alice
Still Alice
Author: Lisa Genova
Genre: Literature & Fiction
Book Type: Mass Market Paperback
salsadancer avatar reviewed on + 27 more book reviews


Genova, who has a Ph.D. in neuroscience from Harvard, relates the experience of living with Alzheimer's from the Alzheimer's point of view. Alice, a brilliant professor of cognitive psychology at Harvard and a world-renowned expert in linguistics, discovers she has early onset Alzheimer's. It read a little too much like a scientific paper, as though Alice's thoughts and struggles are a researcher's observations studying Alzheimer's. Such a topic allows few endings that can be original and satisfying at the same time. I felt that how it ended, though, could have been better. It was rushed and confusing to me; I wanted to know more about how John, Alice's husband, continued to deal with their situation, and how they ultimately decided on that big moving question.