BOOK REVIEW

The House on Beartown Road is a memoir of Elizabeth Cohen’s experience caring for her father who has been diagnosed with Alzheimer Disease while raising her infant daughter as a single mother during a storm-ridden New York winter. Never self-pitying, the book has been appropriately described as a tribute to her family. Elizabeth Cohen observes the changes and developments the family rapidly undergoes while her daughter is in the early stages of development and her father entering the mid-late stages of Alzheimer’s disease. The memoir captures the chaotic role of the caregiver as she struggles to take care of both family members while managing her household and a career as a journalist. A poignant read. A remarkable feature of the memoir is the thought provoking exploration of the nature of memory that Cohen conveys by mapping the parallels and disparities between her daughter’s learning and her father’s forgetting. The book carefully balances the pain and joy of growth and change and demonstrates the struggle to live in the moment when interacting with both a child and an elder with Alzheimer Disease. By narrating the help that neighbors provided to the Cohen family, the author underscores how crucial support is for the caregiver. My favorite quote from the book: “His own speech is paired down now, skeletal, like he has become. And eloquent. He himself has begun to speak in poetry. When Ava walks into a room he says: “Here’s the one that fills the room with hurricanes. There is undeniable beauty in the way he is losing language, the way he substitutes different words when he cannot find the ones he wants. He calls toast “the singed bread,” and apples “the crackly, magnificent, sweet ones.” Sometimes he calls me and Ava “the beautiful big one” and “the beautiful little one.” The memoir is not directly about tips for the caregiver. Rather, it lays bare the fact that one often copes out of necessity and articulates both the humor and the pain caused by the disease. The book details the wayward path of the disease and its impact on a small family with acute insight. Anyone could read this book, whether touched by Alzheimer’s disease or not. The language is beautiful and deeply resonant. Review provided by Allison Connolly – Information Coordinator, Alzheimer Society of B.C.