The life of Eileen Tumulty from 1951 to 2011, starting when she is 9 and from her point of view. In her mid-forties her son Connell becomes a teenager and we see how he feels too. Round the middle of this 620-page book Eileen’s 51-year old husband, Ed, is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and from then on the disease seizes control of the story.
Financial difficulties arise as he has to give up work and extra help is needed in the house. As Ed’s health declines so Connell’s story grows. Dividing into two parts, post and pre-diagnosis, this initially paints Eileen as a very self-centred, materialistic person, later we admire her compassion, tenacity and strength of character.
An excellent reading group book for it will provoke much debate on Alzheimer’s, a patient’s decline and the financial impact on relatives.
| Primary Genre | Family Drama |
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LONGLISTED FOR THE GUARDIAN FIRST BOOK AWARD A stunning, heartbreaking debut - 'We Are Not Ourselves' is both the intimate story of a family and an epic of the American Century. Raised in the 1940s in the mostly Irish neighbourhood of Jackson Heights, Queens, by an alcoholic mother and a union-wage father, Eileen yearns for more from an early age.
We Are Not Ourselves features in the following genres: Family Drama, Books with reviews by our Reader Review Panel, Modern and Contemporary Fiction, Book Club Recommendations, eBooks of the Month, Fiction, Recommendations, General Fiction
Paperback, Hardback. Not Available.
We Are Not Ourselves was written by Matthew Thomas and published by Fourth Estate Ltd an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers
We Are Not Ourselves has 640 pages
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