But Then Something Happened: A Story of Everyday Dementia
Chris Carling (2012) ISBN: 978-0957307902
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‘But Then Something Happened: A Story of Everyday Dementia’ is a moving and highly topical memoir dealing with a subject never far from the news, the increase in dementia in families. It tells the story of one family hit by a double dose of dementia, as Dad, Fred, develops vascular dementia at the same time as Mum, Mary, is struck by Alzheimer’s. Fred and Mary are a quirky long-married couple with a relationship that’s unique, as all marriages are. The focus of the story is on what happens to their couple, their long love story, as both gradually lose their minds. And on what happens to their relationship with their daughter, Chris, the narrator, who falls into an ‘amateur carer’ role, groping her way uncertainly around ‘the system’, learning at first hand how dementia changes everything in ordinary and extraordinary ways.
One Of Us Is Lying
Sally Cline (2013) ISBN: 978-0957307933
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One of Us is Lying is a volume of nuanced and largely linked tales concerned with love, loss, longing and betrayal. Sally Cline sees darkness and suffering beneath polished surfaces and glittering conversations. Several of the stories appear domestic with an outward harmony but misery or even humiliation lurk quietly behind suburban facades. However the bold passionate writing reminds readers of historic violence and ancient fears as well as the small disturbances of contemporary life.
In the linked stories Sally Cline examines intertwined and complex relationships between her characters over a number of years. A secondary character in one story may become the central character in another.