The memory Book - Rowan Coleman

The name of your first born.

The face of your lover.

What would happen if your memory of these began to fade?

Is it possible to rebuild your life?

Raise a family?

Fall in love again?

When Claire begins to write her Memory Book she already knows that this scrapbook of mementoes will soon be all her daughters and husband have left of her.

But how can she hold on to the past when her future is slipping through her fingers....?

Published by: Ebury Press - Fiction

Year: 2014 - Paperback

Pages: 374

ISBN: 978-0-091953-11-9

I had first seen this book as a hardback in 2014 and had made a mental note to read sometime in the future.  Having almost but not quite completed by challenge to read the 26 books that had still been residing on my bookshelf this year, I decided I could have a little treat and when I saw that 'The Memory Book' was about to come out in Paperback I decided it was fate and the right time to pick up a copy.

When I started reading it I thought it was going to be about a women who had received a diagnosis of cancer and that the story would be around how she would prepare her family for when she had gone.

I was wrong.

The story is of a young women in her 40's married with two daughters who has a diagnosis of early on-set  familial Alzheimer's. Her father had, had it and now she had come to realize that she had the gene too. It started the day she drove her beautiful red car into the post box outside the school where she worked and not remembering whether she had, had breakfast or not. Then one morning she couldn't make sense of her shoes and upon going down stairs to ask her daughter about it she then couldn't remember her daughter's name.  She knew then that the fog was starting and from then on it was a barrage of  tests until it was confirmed she had AD just like her father had had. The Memory Book tells the story of  Claire and her family.  How she copes with remembering some things but not others. Not even being able to remember where you live some days but know you have red curtains.  Having to have your mother come and live with you to stop you wandering off in the supermarket or taking your 3 year old to the park in the dark.   

It was a very moving read and makes you wonder just how millions of families deal with this scenario every day. 

Definitely worth the time it takes to read this novel by Rowan Coleman.

Happy reading one & all.

Mx