This book is Ruth’s diary of her dads dementia is sooo

A lot of people mentioned that this book is funny. The summary on the flap even says the story is told from a deep well of humor. I didn’t think it was funny. I don’t think I laughed out loud once, but I did cry. This book wrecked me. I read the entire thing in one day. I loved it.

I'm not sure what I thought of this, other than it should have been classified as a novella, at not even 200 pages. Written like a journal, recording memories, so they aren't lost after memory is?
It's certainly about loss: memories as her father's condition with alzheimers declines over her year long stay. She's also recently lost a love.
But in the process of losing, she is reclaiming for them all. Memories her father wrote down, a new relationship, better relationships and understanding of her family members. It's sweet with some funny acknowledgements about the otherwise mundane.
Also, just a note, I, too, felt like I was a magnet for lost hair pieces. Maybe it's just the Bay Area, but I couldn't walk outside my apartment without finding a wig.

This book made me laugh, loudly. It made my cry without restraint. It is one of those books that hit me like it was written for me.

charming, melancholy and poignant. wonderful story about alzheimer's and family and being a daughter. appreciated the chronological journal structure & conversational tone. she illustrates alzheimer's quite well. here's two notable passages:

"What happened next was that he shouted at me. He shouted that he wasn't a child and he knew what tomatoes were and those were tomatoes, and that he was my father, and what was my problem, that i couldn't show him some respect. My first instinct was to put the steak knife away became i had never seen him like this, and because i was frightened. He saw what i had five rugby the knife, seemed insulted that i thought he might be dangerous, took his plate and threw it against the wall. It shattered, on cue."

"You mentioned there were some things on your mind, but lately you were having trouble getting to them--accessing them. you had the feeling that all the thoughts were in a box covered in tape, and the trouble was there was too much tape, and the trouble was you didn't have the proper tools to access them--no scissors and no knife-- and it was a lot of trouble-trying to find the end of the rope."

I appreciated the observations about humans and their behaviors, how a family operates sometimes in its own non-conventional way - a functional dysfunctionality. I also appreciated some of the humor stuck in there. I guess what didn't track for me was the way I read the book compared to some of the praise from other authors on the back of the book. There was mention of a "devastating end" of the book and I was like, "What devastating end?" Maybe it's the way I've read it. Maybe I didn't take away what I was supposed to?

“At one point Dad emerges, shirtless, into the kitchen, to brew himself coffee. I get my nipples from him, I realize, alarmed.” pg. 18-19

“It was grotesque, the way I kept trying to save that relationship. Like trying to tuck an elephant into pants.” pg. 24

“In last night’s dream, I was in high school geometry class. There was a class pet: a canary who chirped with the correct answers. He’d been trained in square roots. A classmate, wanting to stump the canary, asked what was the square root of 28,561? The bird chirped confidently to 169.
In the morning, I was impressed: not with the canary, but with my subconscious mind, for knowing the math.” pg. 58

“You know what else is unfair, about Joel? That I loosened the jar lid, so somebody else could open him.” pg. 68

“We go to the pet store. We watch the fish for a while. There are depressed-looking sea snails, sucking algae slowly. It occurs to me that they might be taking their time, enjoying the algae. Maybe they aren’t depressed after all. Maybe it’s the opposite, and the one who’s depressed is me.” pg. 99

Book: borrowed from NB Branch.

Very sweet, sometimes profound, a little sad--and some good trivia, to boot. I read the whole book in one sitting on a Friday afternoon and will be thinking about it for awhile. It's a companion to Still Alice--an invitation to think about dementia and love.