‘MY FATHER’S BRAIN’
By Sandeep Jauhar, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 256 pages, $28.
something more?
Sandeep and his siblings (all are physicians) come at their father’s problems from different perspectives — brother Rajiv is almost brutally clear-eyed about what is happening; sister Suneeta, who lives in Minneapolis, pushes for services and help; but Sandeep is in denial. His father is a worldrenowned geneticist; surely there can’t be something profoundly wrong with his brain.
As their father begins to wander, Sandeep makes excuses, but his brother is nearly at his wits’ end.
“Do you really believe that he can still take care of himself ? He can’t even work the TV! When was the last time he sent you an email?” Sandeep’s brother asks. “You have to get over this concept of independence.”
“My Father’s Brain,” subtitled “Life in the Shadow of Alzheimer’s,” feels piercingly honest — the disagreements among siblings, the author’s stubbornness, the pain of their brilliant father growing ever more vague. At what point, Jauhar wonders, will Prem still be Prem? And then what?
Central Kentucky native Julia Seales wrote the beginnings of her first book on the back of her chemistry notes when she was a student at West Jessamine High School in Nicholasville.
Long before the scribbles on the back of her high school class notes, Seales had first dreamed of being a published author when she was 8 years old.
More than two decades later, that dream came to fruition in June with the publication of her novel, “A Most Agreeable Murder,” which has gone on to become a national bestseller. The book is described as a “cozy mystery” and features the coming-of-age of Beatrice Steele.
Seales, a graduate of Vanderbilt University who now resides in Los Angeles, said her book was inspired by her love of Jane Austen and Agatha Christie, and it offers romance, comedy, social commentary, personal growth and some mystery.
“I find murder mystery very comforting. A cozy, murder mystery where loose ends are tied up in the end,” Seales said in a recent interview.
Seales had the idea for her bestseller in 2019, while she was working for a showrunner in Los Angeles. When the television and film industry was shuttered by the COVID-19 pandemic, Seales decided there wouldn’t be a better time to work on achieving her dream.
She set a goal to use the Stephen King method — writing 2,000 words a day — to piecemeal her first draft together in six months. Then she enlisted the help of her mother, her roommate and a beta reader for more edits