A quote from a review by John Bayley endorses David Shenk’s The Forgetting, a sad reminder of Bayley’s own experience with his partner Iris Murdoch as she suffered Alzheimer’s disease. For the British Medical Association, this was its Book of the Year.
The stories of those afflicted with the disease are sad: it’s impossible not to be moved by the account of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s great mind fumbling to recollect friends and correspondents, sadly ironic after his life’s work to record his experiences and thoughts. To this and other accounts Shenk adds a look at the science and how commercial interests may distort it.…
