Professor Alice Howland was still at the peak of a dazzling career—respected Harvard teacher, world-renowned for her teaching and research in linguistics and cognitive psychology. She was also the mother of three grown and accomplished children, married to a successful husband, John. Then early on-set Alzheimer’s disease struck. Her perfect life began to crumble away. The very thing that once defined her, knowledge, began to slip away as the neuron disease led her farther away from the Alice she once was and knew. A beautifully scripted book, Genova frames a story that hits square in the chest, intimately coloring in the grey areas few literary genres dare address.

Though there is no real-life Alice Howland that the book’s based off of, it feels like it. Rolling straightforward in time and relentless in its grasp, Still Alice attends with a deep poignancy that feels a too real. In few books is Alzheimer’s painted so strikingly credibly, translated into human events and struggling human hearts. Alice’s reluctant erosion is stunning, overwhelming as it happens before your very eyes. 

But this isn’t a story to sob about. A firm insistence on survival is established; Alice states that “My yesterdays are disappearing, and my tomorrows are uncertain, so what do I live for? I live for each day. I live in the moment.” Like that, many passages are tear-jerkers, but the overall effect empowers and inspires. No matter if Alice will or will not, this won’t be a story you’ll forget.