Customer Reviews

Death in Slow Motion: My Mother's Descent into Alzheimer's

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I have read Death in Slow Motion, and found it a provocative insight not only into Alzheimer's but more so into its effects on the lives of the people bound by love and duty to their loved one. Ms. Cooney has every reason to dwell on who her mother was, it is after all the central tragedy of the illness. Alzheimer's does not just kill someone, it disintegrates, it degenerates the very essence of the persona you know and love. We do not grieve for the loss of a body, we grieve over the loss of a person and with Alzheimer's we lose the person long before the body they inhabit dies. It is not only Death in Slow Motion, it is also Grief in Slow Motion. I recommend this book to anyone who may be facing a loved one's descent into Alzheimer's or to anyone who thought they were alone with the experience Ms. Cooney so unsparingly reveals. I recommend a visit to the book's website for a more personal insight into the lives involved with this loss.

This book is a must read! You will laugh. You will cry. But if you have ever been a caregiver for a loved one with dementia of the Alzheimer's type, you will finally know--really know--you are not alone. Someone out there(E.Cooney), knows exactly what you are going through--all your feelings of sorrow and stress, all your frustration and guilt.
Personally, I found I really needed to read this book. I thought there were no words to describe the intensity of the experience I went through with my beloved mother, who also had A.D. But E. Cooney's words do just that.
Her honest story will amaze you as you hear your own voice echoing her thoughts and emotions. You'll ride the roller-coaster of high expectations and low disappointments, high hopes and low regrets, in the land of Alzheimer's.
I wish I had had this book when I was caring for my mother. I knew of no one who could truly understand our plight, not just when my mom lived with me, but also when I had to move her elsewhere. Though back then I might have been too exhausted to read more than a few pages each day, even that would've been such comfort and encouragement to my aching heart, because I wouldn't have felt so alone.
Over three years have passed since my mother died, and I am still processing grief over my loss and her sad decline. But in the pages of this book, I found a healing balm. Whether or not it was the author's intention, she has given me a gift for which I am truly grateful. Buy this book, and pray for a cure for this devastating disease!

Lovely & fascinating piece of work. Her voice is so lucid, so deliberate, reminds me of what an old mentor advised me in my youth: "Full speed ahead, and strive for tone!"

I loved the story, sad as it is. I loved the author's willingness to totally expose herself in order to honour her subject and craft. There wasn't a page in there that seemed like Ms. Cooney was hiding back behind it, it was all so up front...... And especially I loved the wonderful hilarious touching tough loose accurate lingo......

This is a beautiful piece of writing.

There are two things this book is not. It is neither for the faint of heart nor yet another manual describing Alzheimer symptoms and possible scenarios for dealing with them. Rather,
it is the painful and painfully honest chronicle of Ms. Cooney's
mother's descent into Alzheimer's disease. It is a story of fighting the good fight and knowing from day one that you will
lose. It is a story barren of good answers and happy endings, but
it is a true story, and a brutal one.

For those who have lived their own variation of the author's story, this book will provide a certain comfort. For those not
in the shadow of Alzheimer's, it is a grim and cautionary tale.

The great strength of this book lies not in the story itself, but
in the honesty with which it is told. It fully and unqualifiedly
deserves to be read.

I don't read as much as I should. For me to actually finish a book, it has to grab me and keep grabbing me, from start to finish. The last books I've read have been Into Thin Air, The Perfect Storm and Touching The Void. Get the idea? I chose Ms. Cooney's book almost exclusively because of the title.

Though I have read maybe only a couple of hundred books in my LIFE, I'd have to say this is, by far, the best book I have ever read. Ms. Cooney is extraordinarily articulate. If asked to describe an orange, Ms. Cooney would have 400 or so perfect adjectives and paint a more vivid picture of an orange than anyone ever has.

So, yes, the book grabbed me. And it changed me. Her perspectives, and more significantly, her compassion, altered the way I look at life and existence, and the difference between the two. I am a better man for having read this book.

Mike Downes

After reading Eleanor Cooney's wonderful book, I feel much better equiped to handle my own mother's recent diagnosis of Alzheimer's Disease. Eleanor said things I was thinking, but was not able to put into words. I laughed, I cried, but mostly I got a ton of wonderful, very useful information. Thank you Eleanor for opening your heart and putting your voice on paper.

Realistic, harrowing, and profoundly honest account of caring for someone heading down the steep slide of Alzheimer's. Author Cooney's grief when she realizes there's nothing she can do to prevent or slow down her mother's galloping dementia is stressful to read; I can't imagine what it must have been like to live it, especially as Cooney's mother was always elegant, talented, gracious, and witty. To watch her withering dependence and confusion is horrific, and things only get worse when Mom moves into their house.
This is a very harrowing memoir, not only of the disease's gradual destruction of an individual, but also what it can do to the caregivers.

Eleanor Cooney, a truly gifted and literary writer with a wicked sense of humor and irony, has certainly gotten to "the heart of the beast called Alzheimer's" in this compelling book about how her mother's dementia spun their lives out of control. As anyone going through this heartbreaking process knows firsthand, not only are you faced with losing the parent, spouse, or grandparent you love, but also with the harsh realities of how "the beast" takes over every aspect of your life. In addition to being impossible to put down, one of the things that struck me most about this book was how her story touches on so many levels. DEATH IN SLOW MOTION is as much a love story, a tribute to her mom - a memorable character if there ever was one - as it is about living, loving, looking back and having to face your own worst demons and forge ahead the best way you know how. This is the best book I've read in a long time.

Full of compellingly realistic details and infused with the ambivalence all middle-aged people must feel when faced with their parents' disintegration, this book kept me up all night as I read it non-stop from beginning to end. After breakfast and a quick nap, I sat down and read the book all over again. This book isn't just for the children of people suffering from Alzheimer's; it's for all of us who have faced, are facing, or will face the aging and death of parents. I join the author in laughing and weeping over this universal human predicament. Thank you, Ms. Cooney, for writing this book.

Eleanor Cooney takes her readers on the journey most dreaded by both young and adult children, that of losing one's mother. However, in this case, the mother is physically alive but mentally lost in the mire of Alzheimer's disease. Eleanor Cooney captures the pain involved in losing her best friend, protector, mentor-mother and reveals the embarrassment of seeing her witty, glamorous novelist mother deteriorate into a tedious, unkempt person whose conversations consist of these repeated phrases: "Where's my basket (purse)?", "I want to go home" and "Why did Mike (her husband) have to die?" Ms. Cooney writes a poignant and emotionally honest book about the transition from being her mother's child to parenting her mother. This process first begins with the phone calls of her mother's worried neighbors and continues through the agonizing medical and psychological testing and into the frustrations of navigating through the maze of residential placement. The raw emotions awakened by this disease - - the feelings of betrayal, followed by relief tainted with guilt - - reveal a paradoxical vision familiar to many caregivers, a vision portraying Dante's Hell and The Comedy Works. Woven into this black comedic story of loss is the gain of becoming acquainted with the vivacious personality of Eleanor Cooney's mother, Mary Durant. According to Mary, one of the world's greatest sins is being tedious. This book is anything but tedious and is superbly crafted and written. If E. Cooney were to consult her mother's image and ask her if she approved of the book, her response would be "Bravo."