Keeper
Alzheimer's affects around 400,000 people in Britain today. These numbers are set to soar: a tidal wave of dementia is coming our way.
Three years ago, Andrea Gillies made the decision to take on the full-time care of her mother-in-law, Nancy, an Alzheimer's sufferer. With her family, she moved to a remote peninsula in northern Scotland to a house with sufficient space to accommodate Nancy and her elderly husband Morris and there embarked on an extraordinarily challenging journey.
Keeper describes the terrible emotional strain of living with Alzheimer's, the trials faced by both sufferer and carer when patience and obligations are pushed to the limit... The book is also a brilliantly illuminating examination of the disease itself. It explores the brain and consciousness, and tackles profound questions about the self, the soul, and how memory informs who we are.
"This is one of the most moving and important books that I have read on Alzheimer's." John Bayley
"Thoughtful, informative and true. . . a very good, very necessary book." Sir Richard Eyre, Patron of the Alzheimer's Research Trust
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About the author
Andrea Gillies was born in York of a Yorkshire mother and proudly Scottish father and went to St Andrews University, via a three year stint living in