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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Personal Account Makes the Difference,
By "debzanne" (Campbell, CA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: In a Tangled Wood: An Alzheimer's Journey (Hardcover)
Ms. Dyer's account of her own mother's illness is really what made the difference for me in this book. I am not touched by alzheimer's disease yet, so I have no basis of engagement or interest. But something about this book told me I'd enjoy it, and I was right.Ms. Dyer's MO is to simply present her story about her mother intertwined with the stories of other people in the home with her mother. She reflects on her mother's past, on their shared pasts, on her own past. She doesn't ever get overly weepy, but Dyer does present her feelings as her mother decays further and further away from her true self. Overall, though, you feel that Dyer was happy to be able to experience this trying time with her mother, and you get a glimpse of the strength that it must have taken to come back to the home each day. It's clear that writing about her experiences is therapy. But reading about them is therapy, too; it forces you to think about "something else," something more grave than whether you should handwash that plate and whether the lawn needs another cut. In reality, Dyer reveals many issues of the basic human condition that are grounds for thoughtful discussion and planning. I enjoyed every bit of the book. The personal account format really drew me in, and the reality and emotion kept me reading.
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The best book I've read on the subject of Alzheimer's,
By A Customer
This review is from: In a Tangled Wood: An Alzheimer's Journey (Paperback)
I've read them all and this is the best. Don't be afraid to read it thinking it will be "depressing". This book is uplifting, funny and very human.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Heartfelt and heartbreaking,
By
This review is from: In a Tangled Wood: An Alzheimer's Journey (Hardcover)
This is a difficult book to read, but it is a painfully honest and accurate look at daily life in an alzheimer's unit of a nursing home. I was a volunteer "friendly visitor" for nearly four years at a skilled nursing facility, where there were some alzheimer's patients mixed in with the other patients, so I recognized much of what Dyer describes of the behavior and physical failings of her mother and other patients at Tanglewood. This is not a very long book - I read it in just one day - but I found I had to keep getting up and taking short breaks from it, because I kept catching myself physically clenching and wincing as Dyer described in detail, in short, broken sequences, examples of patients in the unit (yes, including her own mother) who had lost control of their bodily functions and would often wet themselves and/or play with and fling their own feces. But perhaps the most heartbreaking loss of all in these victims of this terrible disease is the loss of words, and even of speech itself. Dyer's mother was also profoundly deaf, which exacerbated the problem of communication even more.
Perhaps one of the most telling lines in this short book is a comment often voiced by one of the patients, who enjoys repeating a favorite phrase, a "joke": "Death must be OK ... because nobody has ever come back from it!" And for the patients far gone in the clutches of this devastating dementia, perhaps death would be okay. As hard as alzheimer's is on its victims, it can be equally hard on the victims' families, on their closest caregivers and visitors - spouses, parents, children. When her mother finally succumbs to the disease, Dyer comments, "I don't plan to recover from what I've seen over the last nine years. My friends look at me with sorrow and urge me to take a good long vacation ... The Florida sun or a Bahamas breeze will not help me forget any of this. And why would the daughter of a woman who forgot everything find comfort in forgetfulness? ... I don't want to forget a single thing." In a Tangled Wood is Dyer's testament that she has not forgotten a single thing. Most of all she has not forgotten her mother. Painful at the writing must have been, this book stands as a tribute to her mother, and also to the people who helped to care for Annabelle Coyne during those last difficult years. This is the third memoir by Dyer that I have read. All three are excellent. Joyce's mother and father would be proud. - Tim Bazzett, author of LOVE, WAR & POLIO: The Life and Times of Young Bill Porteous
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