My personal interests can be resumed in this phrase: All Things Human. It is us, little human beings on this big planet, that fascinate me. I love the many questions we ask, and the ease with which we seem to be happy with our simple answers.
I just finished reading LaPlante’s novel Turn of Mind, and it too was fascinating to me from the perspective that it deals with the process of insanity that befalls a brilliant and intellectual orthopedic surgeon in Chicago. Dr. Jennifer White is in her mid sixties, widowed, with two children, a 29 year old son who seems to be having issues with addiction and a 24 old year girl who is in academia. Even though her husband is dead, it turns out that he will end up playing an important role towards the end of the novel.
Dr. White seems to realize she will need to “retire” from her job because she has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. In spite of her experience and her professional brilliance, the disease interferes more and more with her everyday life to the point that she needs to be constantly supervised by a caregiver to assure her safety.
The book is narrated by Jennifer: cool, aloof, withdrawn, rational and very intellectual Jennifer. We learn from her during moments of lucidity how she feels about love, sex, and motherhood and she gives us no sentimental bullshit. She’s hard, stubborn, meticulous, rational and highly intelligent.
The novel becomes a bit dark, well, because it’s never easy to talk about madness, especially when it hits so close to home. Except for Jennifer herself, the characters seem imprecise and blurry being that we get to know them through the eyes of a woman who is steadily declinining into her disease.
The plot thickens and becomes more complex when we find out that Jennifer’s best "frenemy," Amanda, who lives three doors down, is found murdered in her home with four of her fingers surgically removed. (Yes, Jennifer’s area of expertise is hand surgery.) Jennifer does not have any recollection of Amanda’s demise, but this is how she becomes a ”person of interest.”
So if learning a possible manner in which a person might deal with Alzheimer’s was not enough, now you must continue reading avidly because you must also learn if Jennifer killed Amanda and if she did, why.
I liked the pace of the book. Not too slow, not too fast. It’s hard not sympathize with Jennifer as she watches her wonderful mind unravel and she discovers what she is capable of even in her dementia.
Bottom line: I just talked myself into re-reading this book soon.
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