What Dementia Teaches Us About Love (Hardback)
Nicci Gerrard (author)- In stock online
Dementia is all around us, in our families and in our genes; perhaps in our own futures. If it's not you or me, it's someone we love.
After her own father's death from dementia, the writer and campaigner Nicci Gerrard set out to explore the illness that now touches millions of us, yet which we still struggle to speak about. What does dementia mean, for those who live with it, and those who care for them?
This truthful, humane book is an attempt to understand. It is filled with stories, both moving and optimistic: from those living with dementia to those planning the end of life, from the scientists unlocking the mysteries of the brain to the therapists using art and music to enrich the lives of sufferers, from the campaigners battling for greater compassion in care to the families trying to make sense of this 'incomprehensible de-creation of the self'. It explores memory, language, identity, ageing and the notion of what it truly means to care. And it asks, how do we begin to value those who become old, invisible, forgotten? What do we owe them, and each other as humans? What, in the end, really matters?
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
ISBN: 9780241347454
Number of pages: 272
Weight: 392 g
Dimensions: 222 x 144 x 27 mm
MEDIA REVIEWS
'Essential reading about love, life and care.' - Kate Mosse
'Nobody has written on dementia as well as Nicci Gerrard in this new book.' - Andrew Marr
'Gerrard ranges widely and wisely, raising questions about what it is to be human and facing truths too deep for tears.' - Blake Morrison, poet and author of And When Did You Last See Your Father?
'This is a tender, lyrical, profound, urgent book... Gerrard has penned a treatise on what it is to be human.' - Yasmin Alibhai-Brown
'Evocative and powerful, shining a light on a world which is often hidden and misunderstood.' - Jane Cummings, Chief Nursing Officer for England
Gerrard writes beautifully, encyclopaedically and with humanity.' - Nicholas Timmins, senior fellow at the Institute for Government and the King's Fund, honorary fellow of Royal College of Physicians, author of Five Giants
'Nicci Gerrard exudes understanding of the breadth, scale and complexity of the dementias and the challenges they pose for society. Yet she communicates simply, personally and practically as if speaking individually to each of us.' - Sebastian Crutch, Professor of Neuropsychology, Dementia Research Centre, University College London
'Nicci Gerrard writes with power, insight, empathy and extraordinary beauty about the world of dementia... and demonstrates how we can address the fear, despair and ignorance that has accompanied its spread.' - Paul Webster, editor of the Observer
