Our Book Review: We Are Not Ourselves by Matthew Thomas (2014)

Why we read this book: Listed as a top book by Entertainment Weekly

Would he recommend this book: Yes

Would she recommend this book: Yes

Our review: This was one of the books that I entered without knowing much about it. My wife had read it and recommended it. She’d given me a brief review (spoiler alert!)–that it was a rare book that explored the impacted of Alzheimer’s disease, and that she found it engaging, although the narrative changes were abrupt and the writing clunky in spots. With that, I let the book take me down its path.

What I really appreciated about this Thomas’ approach was that he didn’t try to get inside the mind of the Alzheimer’s sufferer. This is the story of the family around the father, much more than about his own story. We certainly learn of his struggles to control his mind–through a maniacal focus on music, for example. Or when he refuses to engage his students during a class his son visits. We see and feel the slow loss of his abilities, and his families own struggles to recognize his decline. That was perhaps the most frustrating aspect of my reading–his wife and son’s failures to recognize what is happening to him. Do they not want to admit that something is wrong? are they too selfish to understand what is happening? The son’s inability to deal with his father as a changed man continues well past the diagnosis, when he attempts to force a level of normalcy on his family before turning to avoidance as his father disappears. This was exasperating as a reader, but perhaps because it touched that fear of how denying this disease, or any situation where death comes slowly, is the easier, although guilt, path. I found myself yearning for the father’s death–while I told myself I wanted to see how the mother and son’s characters dealt with it, more likely it was my own avoidance of wanting to experience the family’s plight. Thomas doesn’t allow an  easy escape, and brings us every loss, and even minor happiness, along their journey where we know the ending.

I found the novel touching, scary, and occasionally beautifully written. I did find the shift to the son’s perspective a bit jarring when it occurred, and the shifts between the mother and son’s viewpoints didn’t always feel appropriate. A compelling family narrative, worth our time and fears.