Customer Reviews

In a Tangled Wood: An Alzheimer's Journey

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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.

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.

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

This is a journey for sure. And this great book lets us in on a very touching and personal journey of this long and horrible diaseas.Not only for the person it is happening to, but the journey of the family and friends along with it,and the people who's lives it touchs. A very good book.

Joyce Dyer is a masterful writer, and In A Tangled Wood is some of her very best work. Though many find the subject of Alzheimer's Disease to be taboo or distasteful, Ms. Dyer presents her family's journey through her mother's AD years in such loving and personal terms it is impossible to feel anything but tremendous respect for everyone involved.

Dyer uses cunningly descriptive metaphors throughout the book, as well as well-placed bits of comic relief in what could have easily become a much too depressing story. She reveals enough of herself personally to allow the reader to understand how she and her mother developed the relationship they had. While this is a story about a woman who has AD, it's also a story about a daughter's relationship with her mother - regardless of any illness. It reveals what we children can and will do for our parents when the tables (ultimately) turn.

It is a tale of courage and faith, of patience and hope, of acceptance and love.