Remind Me Who I Am, Again

by Linda Grant

In Remind Me Who I Am, Again, Linda Grant tells the story of her mother's gradual but devastating mental deterioration, her diagnosis as a victim of Alzheimer's disease, and her family's struggle to come to terms with the catastrophic impact of the disease. Iimmensely moving, at times darkly comic, and searingly honest, it combines biography and memoir in a unique examination of the profound questions of identity, memory, and autonomy that dementia raises.

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, Biography Memoir, Biography

307 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1998

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads' database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Linda Grant was born in Liverpool on 15 February 1951, the child of Russian and Polish Jewish immigrants. She was educated at the Belvedere School (GDST), read English at the University of York, completed an M.A. in English at MacMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario and did further post-graduate studies at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada, where she lived from 1977 to 1984.

In 1985 she returned to Britain and became a journalist. From 1995 to 2000 she was a feature writer for the Guardian, where between 1997 and 1998 she also had a weekly column in G2. She contributed regularly to the Weekend section on subjects including the background to the use of drug Ecstasy (for which she was shortlisted for the UK Press Gazette Feature Writer of the Year Award in 1996), body modification, racism against Romanies in the Czech Republic, her own journey to Jewish Poland and to her father's birthplace and during the Kosovo War, an examination of the background to Serb nationalism.

Reviews

[Sibyl · Rating 4 out of 5]

In some ways this is a grim book, yet I am finding rereading it bizarrely comforting.

Linda Grant is uncompromisingly honest on what it can mean to 'respect the choices' made by older people - their need for 'independence', when independence means living in fear, isolation and confusion.

Reading about the nightmarish struggles of another middle-aged person with a frail elderly parent, can make the situation in one's own family circle seem much less isolated/isolating.

This could be a claustrophobic narrative, aboutt increasing limitation, the narrowing of experience. However Linda Grant's reflections on stories and histories, her researches into the nature of memory itself, give this account of her mother's progressing dementia a breadth and profundity that is oddly exhilarating....

[Jane · Rating 5 out of 5]

This gets 5 stars from me because some elements of it are so very, heartbreaking, familiar. I've nodded, read bits to the lovely husband who has been by my side during the whole, and the end, of my Mum's journey through dementia, and I've cried.

The use of verbal cues to disguise a failing grasp on conversation - "yes, that's right".
The need to rediscover the history of the family - I wrote chapters of my Mum's life to give her care team a backstory and some context to who she had been.
The struggle to come to terms with this new relationship that throws you into a very different role to that you'd had before.
The challenge with guilt.

Mum lost her fight with dementia 9 months ago. I'm not sure that I could have, or should have, read this whilst she was alive. But as I try and come to terms with the experiences of those 14 or so years it helps to know I wasn't the only person to ask these questions or struggle with these things.

[erl · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book many years ago, and it has stayed with me. That's why I gave it such a high rating. Linda Grant has a volatile relationship with her mother; actually, with both her parents. But as her strong, tough mother deteriorates, she does what she can to support her. Grant is angry at her mother, and the reader watches her work through her resentments as the mother continues to deteriorate. But although that fact sometimes makes the book hard to read, it rings all too true. Life has taught me that losing someone with whom I have a difficult relationship is a thousand times harder than losing someone with whom I have no issues. Grant has written a deeply personal memoir. If you want something sweet about how hard it is to lose the perfect mother, go on and pass this book by. But if you're open to reading a gritty account of dealing with a difficult woman who only grows more difficult, this book is for you.

[sevdah]

A daughter writing a memoir about her mother's Alzheimer, the relationship between the two, and the family history? It sounds like something I would be very keen to read; however I have some very complicated feelings about this book.

The heartbreak over seeing someone completely losing themselves is very real and touching; and the decision to write about it is just as touching. But Linda Grant writes about her egotistical mother in an equally egotistical way; it felt like she's trying to expose her mother for what she really is, trying to convert her mother's many friends into seeing the real her. Which felt strangely cruel, and a bit of a pointless exercise, especially since there were no insights to their relationship - it felt like Grant was writing with a bit of a stiff upper lip, just recounting all the emotional abuse as it happened. But this is not the 8 o'clock news and doesn't make for a very good memoir.

[Gemima · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’d say this isn’t really the kind of book I’d read, but I enjoyed it as much as I related to it with my Nan.

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‘ no one knows how to feel or what to think because the meteor of dementia that strikes families and wipes out so much is supposed to be part of the realm of privacy’

[Abeer Hoque · Rating 2 out of 5]

'Remind Me Who I Am, Again' is a memoir written by Linda Grant about her mother who suffers from vascular dementia (which is brought about by a series of small strokes). It's a bit of a English Jewish family history going back a couple of generations, complete with old B&W photos (but only in the beginning). But mostly, it's about Ms. Grant's troubled history with her mother and how dementia compounds those problems.

It tends to ramble, and the family history bits aren't written in a way that would necessarily be interesting to a non-family member. There are bits in the middle where she appears to get lazy and just quotes her journal, all in italics and fragmentary sentences. And there are sections in the end which just throw in random family members and their history and that's pretty boring. But Ms. Grant has a charming and informal if frantic style of writing, so I found RMWIAA relatively easy to read, despite a sometimes irritating unawareness. Despite all the research she's apparently done (and she quotes it in a style reminiscent of a high school essay), she's unable to attribute her mother's (atrocious) behaviour to brain damage, and instead keeps blaming it all on her personality and a return to a "childish" stage. Then again, if I had a mother like that, maybe I wouldn't be able to look past it either.

Either way, I wish it had been edited (hello Granta editor) and presented more evenly and interestingly because Ms. Grant does have writing talent and stories to tell. I got through this one only because of my interest in stories about memory loss, but wouldn't have otherwise.

[Caz · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book as I am interested in knowing and finding out more about dementia and hearing from relatives of their experiences having a parent who is going through this awful illness.
My precious mother was diagnosed with vascular dementia and is living in a care home.
Linda explains her reason for wanting to write such a personal account of her mother and the difficulties faced. Linda remembers her upbringing in a Jewish family and upbringing which is important to her being and who she is. Linda talks about her relationship with her mother, there are several good humoured moments and stories, there is also feelings of betrayal and guilt and the agonising decisions that have to be made. There is no self-pity, or at least I did not pick up on this but it is clear how unforgiving and cruel this illness is and what can be expected.

Linda researches into memory, how the brain can function and how memories can be confused and lost, how generation by generation much of who we are and how we lived is lost.
It is an eye opener and one that will offer words of wisdom and support

[Jo Birkett · Rating 5 out of 5]

Educational but thank goodness also entertaining & humorous. An outstanding family history full of events & secrets with a huge character at its centre, all of which must be a real trial to someone else but fascinating to read. She would have driven me mad. I do hope the author escapes her fate.

[Liz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a sad book but with very many recognisable events in it for those of us who have also had a parent with dementia, in my case it was my father. The golden rule for ‘dealing’ with people with dementia is to always agree with them, whatever they say so when Linda kept correcting her mother, and reminding her that she had just asked a question, I can understand why Rose became so agitated. If she’d just gone along with what her mother said, life would have been so much easier and calmer for them both.

Mind you, her mother reminded me of my own sometimes e.g. ‘She signed up for marriage and motherhood… And was it her fault that the world and women had changed… (and) given her girls who had not the slightest intention of following in her footsteps?’ My mother wanted her daughters to have the educational advantages that she never had, then bemoaned the fact that none of us would call her every day, like her next door neighbour’s! I assume it’s how a lot of mothers of that age feel or felt about their daughters, unfortunately.

[Randa D'aoust · Rating 1 out of 5]

I didn't finish this book. Partially, it's my own issue, because I was expecting a memoir about dementia or Alzheimer's and this is a story about a family and their history. Unfortunately, I had difficulty reading the sentences because of their composition. I also was not really interested in this family's story as it unfolded. The family has never really been honest with one another or the world, so I was challenged to know who to care about and why I should.

[Kristen Fort · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was interesting to read how their family stories may have been misremembered, and it was brought up that Rose may have been suffering prior to her husband's death, that he may have compensated for her dementia.

[Bridget · Rating 3 out of 5]

An unflinching memoir on the unreliability of memory, family history and identity. An excellent read for those, like me, facing the same situation: the gradual loss of a parent to dementia and all its attendant questioning, guilt, grief and confusion.

[Jonathan Lancashire · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tough read but insightful about the nature of memory and family mythology. And crisply written as ever.

[Perlie · Rating 3 out of 5]

A brutally honest book about dealing with a parent's dimentia. Grant is not always likeable in this account, but she shines a bright light on her relationship with her mother, spanning decades. I found her assumption of Jewish knowledge irritating, mostly because of many mistakes "chazoreth" for example, seemingly combining "chazeret" and "charoseth" we're often in close context with Grant's statement about Judaism, which were given with authority, and often at odds with my beliefs. If you're going it I criticize a religion, Inuit should at least have more than a passing knowledge of its tenets and traditions. However, the dilemma about how to care for a mother who's reverted to childhood is wrenching. It made me appreciate the love and care that my aunt provided for my grandmother!

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Without memory there's chaos, without memory we don't exist". A thought provoking book on memory thats told through her relationship with her Mother and her worsening state of Multi-Infarct Dementia. The importance of memory and history has always fascinated me and Linda Grant delivers a very well written memoir on the subject. A favourite quote from the book actually comes from Saul Bellow "an unexamined life is meaningless but the examined life can make you want to kill yourself". Never a truer statement.

[Kathryn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Two types of memoirs dominate these days. Boomers living through their own medical hell and boomers living through their parents medical hell/demise. This was very good, very honest I think. A meditation on love, duty, disability and exhaustion.

[Janice · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dealing with the difficult subject of dementia this book would be of interest to anybody with a relative suffering from the condition. It's well researched and refreshingly unsentimental but inevitably it is a little depressing.

[Alex · Rating 2 out of 5]

I might be rating unfairly here, because I read this book for a class in which it has no rightful place. Overall, however, I had some ethical concerns with regards to naming some of her more distant relatives and was generally unimpressed with the writing and Grant's insights.

[Ruth · Rating 5 out of 5]

great insight into living and caring for someone with dementia

[Julie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another great book about the painful reality of dementia.

[Alex · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't usually cry when I read, but

[Peter Burton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Long and at times repetitive but ultimately rewarding.