From goodreads.com:

Wendy Mitchell had a busy job with the British National Health Service, raised her two daughters alone, and spent her weekends running and climbing mountains. Then, slowly, a mist settled deep inside the mind she once knew so well, blurring the world around her. She didn't know it then, but dementia was starting to take hold. In 2014, at age fifty-eight, she was diagnosed with young-onset Alzheimer's.

Mitchell shares the heartrending story of her cognitive decline and how she has fought to stave it off. What lay ahead of her after the diagnosis was scary and unknowable, but Mitchell was determined and resourceful, and she vowed to outwit the disease for as long as she could.

As Mitchell learned to embrace her new life, she began to see her condition as a gift, a chance to experience the world with fresh eyes and to find her own way to make a difference. Even now, her sunny outlook persists: She devotes her time to educating doctors, caregivers, and other people living with dementia, helping to reduce the stigma surrounding this insidious disease.

Still living independently, Mitchell now uses Post-it notes and technology to remind her of her routines and has created a "memory room" where she displays photos - with labels - of her daughters, friends, and special places. It is a room where she feels calm and happy, especially on days when the mist descends.

Bloomsbury Publishing 2019

Tarjolle Saaren kansanpuiston minimiittiin :)
Let's see if the book will find a reader over the afternoon coffee in Folk Park of Saari :)

And it did find a reader! Recently, I read a novel where the protagonist had an early onset Alzheimer's (Still Alice by Lisa Genova), and it was so interesting a book that I look forward to reading this memoir as well. Thank you for offering it, Tarya!

This book left me feeling sad, and I guess that's how it is when you read about a person who has an incurable and deteriorating brain decease. But the book was not sad, despite it leaving me feeling sad. It was well written and had a lot of life in it, learning new things, leading active life, travelling to new places, meeting new people. And loving and receiving love from loved ones.

The novel "Still Alice" has remained with me ever since I read it. Wendy Mitchell's book is touching in a different way. It is not a novel, but a memoir written by a woman who is sharing and documenting her own life with an early-onset Alzheimer. I kept wondering how she was able to write so well, and was surprised to learn, among other things, that she often struggled to express spoken words, but writing was much easier for her, for a long time.

The book was picked from the First Sentences VBB round 23. It will get to its new reader at the Tampere BC Convention.