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DEMENTIA

THE bestselling author suggests key novels to help you through the trickier times in life.

RECENTLY, a friend of mine was sitting with his elderly mother, baffled by her new and uncharacteristic silence, when she suddenly came to and asked: ‘And how is your mum?’

The answer, as they say, was in the question. There was the final proof of what he had long suspected: the woman he knew was now gone, somewhere beyond his reach.

The horror of dementia is more common in our long-lived population, and the issues around it much discussed. But it’s not new, of course. Norah Hoult’s There Were No Windows — now republished under the always excellent Persephone imprint — came out in 1946.

Claire Temple is in her 80s, a grande dame of the early 20th century whose own decline coincides with that of her class and her station. Used to glittering parties and big love affairs, she is now shut up in a house with a dull companion — her life closing in, her mind shutting down.

It is not just a devastating portrayal of old age and its indignities. As her doctor observes: ‘So many fairies attended her christening . . . and in the end they had all dwindled to such a sad and joyless measure.’

It’s a reminder that those indignities can affect any of us, no matter who we once were.

Claire doesn’t understand what is happening to her memory. Now the science has caught up, at least those around the sufferer know what’s going on.

Still Alice was the first novel from Lisa Genova, who also happens to be a Harvard neuroscientist, so she knows what she’s writing about. Alice herself is a Harvard professor, and just 50 when her Alzheimer’s is diagnosed. The novel is her deeply moving attempt to tell her own story, before she — its heroine — disappears.

Maud, in Emma Healey’s Elizabeth Is Missing, is 80 and more than forgetful, but has a mystery to solve. The reader is as desperate as Maud to find out what has happened to Elizabeth, but only has Maud’s memory to rely on.

As a result, to read it is to feel what it is like to be inside a failing mind.