Remind Me Who I Am, Again

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Memory as Bereavement - Rated
This is a beautifully written book, exploring the consequences of loss - the gradual loss of memory because of illness, the loss of time, of the past, of meaning. Linda Grant's mother had a particular form of dementia - Multi-Infarct Dementia - but this is a book which will have a meaning for anyone touched by Alzheimer's.

This is an exercise in archaeology - in taking people for granted, in wanting to be a teenager, to become an adult in your own right, to escape from your parents. It's only when you lose them you begin to ask the questions you wish had recognised while they were around. Roots. Identity. Where did the family come from, what was their history, how did they cope, how did they live?

Linda Grant's family were immigrants, fleeing from oppression in 19th century Europe. They reached England by accident or design, some on forged documents. They changed their names. Those who remained behind were consumed by the Holocaust. By the time Linda Grant began speculating on her roots, only her mother was left ... and her mother's memories were colander secure ... they were leaking away.

It is a sense of loss to which I can relate: I'm illegitimate; I lost half my roots before I was born. My mother died suddenly - no wasting disease for her. But I'd never talked to her, asked her the sorts of questions I wish I had. How many of us do ask the questions? How many of us do take the time to inquire, to treat our parents' and grandparents' lives and histories as significant?

Linda Grant, and countless thousands of others, have to endure watching a loved one ebb away. It's as if they fade, become invisible.

This is a book on which you can hang your heart and emotions. It is never clawingly sentimental. It does not explore the practicalities of coping. But it does ask essential questions about how we value ourselves and our families: our identities, our 'selfs', are built from memories, are cemented together by memories and personal histories.

You do not need to be touched by dementia to find this book valuable. It is, quite simply, a beautiful book about family, about family history, and about the discovery of self.

Slightly depressing book by a brilliant writer - Rated
Linda Grant is a fine author and, I think, a brilliant writer, but, unlike other reviewers, I did find this book mildly depressing - perhaps because there was no happy outcome for any of the figures in the book - indeed no happy outcome would be possible.

Grant's confusion about the veracity of her past - were the stories, handed down oral traditions, about the various members of her family and incidents of her childhood - true? - interpretations according to the teller? - utterly fabricated? was an interesting angle which must chime with many of us - how can we ever know the truth of much of what we are told about our background and childhood, especially when, as in Grant's case, there is an almost pathological need in her mother to present things in the most acceptable (to herself) light and not "tell everyone our business".

I empathised with Grant's anger and frustration with the Social Services and their appalling 'Catch 22' policies, and with her frustrated irritation with her demented mother - a mother, moreover, who has not been a great mother or even a particularly loving one and who is consequently difficult for Grant herself to love. I appreciated her honesty about this, but found Margaret Forster's novel on a similar theme, "Have the Men had Enough?" more moving.

very humane , very sane and not least depressing. - Rated
Why is this book such a success? whether one is interested in dementia or not, families and this one in particular, there is something right about this book. So seemingly effortless is it's fluency, it's grasp of detail, that the impression given is not so much of partial human artifact and all the artifices associated with it, but of self-authentication and integrity. there is little or no ingratiating embellishment so easy when matters of deep emotion are being dealt with.

Scenes recalling the homes for the elderly, old childhood haunts, childhood routes through cities, all these, just ARE, manifest in the present tense of her writing.

No rancour or bitterness for the way things are with an ill and difficult mother, but a calm recognition of our own histories as determining ourselves, the rotten bits included.

Never have i read a book so calm, yet so full of lively recall not shamefully damaging nor confessional and there are enough of those sorts of books. a truely fascinating retelling.

Hilarious, heart-rending account a must-read - Rated
This is the best book I've read in years. It deals with the descent of Grant's mother into the oblivion that is dementia, and the nightmare that is getting her rehoused. Moreover, it is a savage indictment of the Grant family's re-invention and bid to escape from its Jewish roots. This is a woman who knows "mental illness" at first hand, and boy, does she compel the reader. Had me screaming with laughter and shedding tears galore. GET IT.