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Scar Tissue
A report from that other country called illness. At its heart is a son's memoir of his mother's voyage into the world of neurological disease, where she loses first her memory, and then her very identity, only to gain - at the very end - a strange serenity. By the author of The Russian Album.
208 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1993
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About the author
Michael Ignatieff
75 books151 followersMichael Grant Ignatieff is a Canadian author, academic and former politician. He was the leader of the Liberal Party of Canada and Leader of the Official Opposition from 2008 until 2011. Known for his work as a historian, Ignatieff has held senior academic posts at the University of Cambridge, the University of Oxford, Harvard University and the University of Toronto.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 49 reviews
November 5, 2017
Memorable
There are several novels with the title 'Scar Tissue' but I doubt whether the quality of the others can match that of Michael Ignatieff's work. It was written in 1993, some time before dementia became such a topical issue. It's the kind of fiction that the reader contests, 'It must be autobiographical', but it isn't.
Two brothers, different, and at odds with each other must come to terms with their mother's dementia and father's death. The younger, the protagonist, lives near, visits and cares for his deteriorating mother obsessively neglecting his wife and children while holding on to his teaching job. The effort to understand the unravelling of his mother's mind and personality runs alongside a personal exploration. He is a philosopher, he has to make sense of everything that happens, rather than living life, as his quiet wife recommends. His brother, a neuropathologist, visits infrequently and apparently dispassionately. He understands from xrays, position emission topography, DNA samples what is happening neurologically, and why. Our protagonist finds his remote, almost uncaring, while he himself tenderly cares, bathes, feeds his invalid mother trying to maintain her vestiges of memory and meaning. She was an artist, but one day inexplicably stops for ever. Was this the beginning of her illness and did she, does she recognize it for what it is?
When the father dies, the home must be sold so that the mother can go into residential care, but the son visits daily, lengthily, continuing to study what is happening to her mentally.
It is only when the brothers are together at the elder's laboratory, and then to his patients, that his humanity, care and efforts to ease his patients' suffering become evident. His own philosophy surfaces to challenge his philosopher brother's: is it ethical to provide a breathing tube for communication when each moment of its use shortens life? Painfully, effortfully, the patient himself opens the philosopher's eyes to what matters most to him: consciousness, awareness.
The younger brother returns home, already now separated from wife and children, to examine every detail of his mother's knowingness and awareness. Does she attach any meaning to her memories; does she know him? The outcome of the plot is known from the first chapter yet the narrative is compelling. I had planned to pass on the novel to another keen reader after reading, but the depth of philosophical discussion means I cannot part with the book. The brothers take their mother to the cinema but after the first panning shot she wants to go home, she finds it disturbing. The older brother explains, 'She sits in the movie theatre of her own mind and she doesn't know what these images are or what her relation to them is supposed to be.'
The son constantly recalls childhood episodes throughout the narrative, relating them to his current experiences. When he experiments by giving his mother paper and pencil she can still draw proficiently, but has it meaning? Can there be Art without an artist? Buying the novel was worth it even for the discussion of this aspect alone.
Not for the lover of fast-moving action, but this novel leaves scar tissue of its own.
March 6, 2017
It feels inappropriate to even evaluate this book. What does it mean to say that it deserves my praise? Such an appraisal feels so shallow, so superficially inconsequential when I think about the pain so palpably imbued into this novel. Scar Tissue is beautiful. I wept at its many difficult moments, either because I, like many other readers, have a dear relative whose life I have watched the unmerciful hands of dementia slowly destroy, or simply because its meditative prose, philosophical perceptiveness, and spiritual caress moved me unlike most of the literature I typically read. “We remain creatures of the word,” the narrator realizes just before his mother’s death. Only the word can save us, only that with which we communicate our desires, fears, and most intimate pain. “Believe in the word,” another character, Moe, tells the narrator, for it is with God—it is God.
Of course, the narrator, an introspective man who seeks to live the examined life praised by Socrates and most philosophers, does not believe in God, and so his inability to lose himself, to deliver himself up and out of the depression into which he descends after the death of his parents, to surrender his sense of self entirely to . . . what? is rather difficult. Death, rather than God, becomes that which he feels “deserves awe,” and only a resolute openness to one’s death, it seems, will afford the authentic existence that he so desperately seeks. To summarize the novel briefly, the narrator’s mother has severe dementia that transforms her into a person whom he barely knows and, ultimately, kills her. His father, a hard, disillusioned Russian exile and prolific soil scientist, also succumbs to his wife’s illness, not because he also suffers from dementia, but because he cannot endure the trauma associated with her descent into painful anonymity. In a certain sense, dementia destroys the narrator’s life as well; whereas he once seemed to have found the kind of existence he wanted—replete with a tenure track philosophy position, a beloved wife, and two children—it all slips away from him so quickly as the illness starts to take over his life. This is not a happy book. It is too true to be joyful.
Scar Tissue does not describe a woman’s descent into Alzheimer’s. Nor is it a book that offers any kind of real advice about what to do when a loved one falls prey to the vile machinations of dementia. In many ways, it seeks to answer a simple set of questions: if I know more—that is, with respect to science and medicine, with what happens inside the brain, with what scar tissue, that mass of protein buildup that eradicates one’s core consciousness and sense of self, looks like on a brain scan—will this help me cope, as I watch another’s life decay before my eyes? Does it make the situation any better? Most importantly, for all its explanatory accounts, can science tell me what it is like for my mother, my Nana, my loved one, to be her? What it feels like to lose one’s mind? Science, it seems, cannot answer that question. In fact, we may never know the answer, not until one who does feel the deterioration, who self-consciously reflects on the self that continues to elude them, describes it to us. The narrator nods toward this potentiality at the end of the novel, when he realizes that he will die his mother’s death: “This room will soon become a prison. The doors will be locked. I will try the handles. I will not be able to escape. The faces of my wife, my children and my brother will blur, decompose and then reform into the image of jailers. My own hands, my own face, my own thoughts will seem alien to me. The words I utter will make no sense, not even to me. I will be dying, but with my eyes open.”
How should we be with such a person, especially a parent? Do we play the role of the dutiful child, only to watch an insatiable illness consume our lives as well? Scar Tissue testifies to the destructive vulnerability this kind of response leaves us open to. Do we remain distant, like the narrator’s brother, only to realize that we have decided to be there too late, when the mind of our beloved has been lost forever? This seems equally unsatisfactory. There is no easy answer, and Scar Tissue does not necessarily favor one over another. Rather, it seeks to demonstrate how we are on an existential level is just as important as what we are on neuroscientific level. Therein lies its beauty and power.
Of course, the narrator, an introspective man who seeks to live the examined life praised by Socrates and most philosophers, does not believe in God, and so his inability to lose himself, to deliver himself up and out of the depression into which he descends after the death of his parents, to surrender his sense of self entirely to . . . what? is rather difficult. Death, rather than God, becomes that which he feels “deserves awe,” and only a resolute openness to one’s death, it seems, will afford the authentic existence that he so desperately seeks. To summarize the novel briefly, the narrator’s mother has severe dementia that transforms her into a person whom he barely knows and, ultimately, kills her. His father, a hard, disillusioned Russian exile and prolific soil scientist, also succumbs to his wife’s illness, not because he also suffers from dementia, but because he cannot endure the trauma associated with her descent into painful anonymity. In a certain sense, dementia destroys the narrator’s life as well; whereas he once seemed to have found the kind of existence he wanted—replete with a tenure track philosophy position, a beloved wife, and two children—it all slips away from him so quickly as the illness starts to take over his life. This is not a happy book. It is too true to be joyful.
Scar Tissue does not describe a woman’s descent into Alzheimer’s. Nor is it a book that offers any kind of real advice about what to do when a loved one falls prey to the vile machinations of dementia. In many ways, it seeks to answer a simple set of questions: if I know more—that is, with respect to science and medicine, with what happens inside the brain, with what scar tissue, that mass of protein buildup that eradicates one’s core consciousness and sense of self, looks like on a brain scan—will this help me cope, as I watch another’s life decay before my eyes? Does it make the situation any better? Most importantly, for all its explanatory accounts, can science tell me what it is like for my mother, my Nana, my loved one, to be her? What it feels like to lose one’s mind? Science, it seems, cannot answer that question. In fact, we may never know the answer, not until one who does feel the deterioration, who self-consciously reflects on the self that continues to elude them, describes it to us. The narrator nods toward this potentiality at the end of the novel, when he realizes that he will die his mother’s death: “This room will soon become a prison. The doors will be locked. I will try the handles. I will not be able to escape. The faces of my wife, my children and my brother will blur, decompose and then reform into the image of jailers. My own hands, my own face, my own thoughts will seem alien to me. The words I utter will make no sense, not even to me. I will be dying, but with my eyes open.”
How should we be with such a person, especially a parent? Do we play the role of the dutiful child, only to watch an insatiable illness consume our lives as well? Scar Tissue testifies to the destructive vulnerability this kind of response leaves us open to. Do we remain distant, like the narrator’s brother, only to realize that we have decided to be there too late, when the mind of our beloved has been lost forever? This seems equally unsatisfactory. There is no easy answer, and Scar Tissue does not necessarily favor one over another. Rather, it seeks to demonstrate how we are on an existential level is just as important as what we are on neuroscientific level. Therein lies its beauty and power.
May 3, 2020
‘I wonder why it is that I am telling (my father’s death) as a story,’ asks Ignatieff’s narrator. It’s a good question, and one that troubled me and clearly the author too. For he raises it again, on the death of his mother from Alzheimer’s disease.
‘There is only one reason to tell you this,’ he then writes and answers in justification, ‘What happens can never be anticipated .. can never be anything other than what it is.’
It seems a pretty lame response. Ignatieff’s final sentence in the acknowledgements is to insist the book ‘is a work of fiction. No resemblance to persons alive or dead is either stated or implied.’
Can one really believe this? The story-teller is unnamed, nor is his brother, or wife, or either parent although the book is dedicated to A.G.I and J.A.G.I. And the reason for telling the stories of these deaths is simple enough – to justify writing a novel.
Then, as if to bless the enterprise, Ignatieff introduces a Stephen Hawkins-like sage dying of motor neurone disease, who declares ‘Believe in the word’ a phrase repeated in case you missed it by his brother two pages later. ‘Go forth and write,’ they seem to say.
At its best, the book is poignant and challenging, observing small details of the mother’s illness and speculating about what elements of her personality and rationality remain locked within.
Her speech is like a child’s eraser board, that wipes out as records each word, the cells of her brain disconnected like the beads spilled from a necklace. She has been an amateur painter and art becomes her final language when the words have gone. This leads into interesting speculation by her philosopher son about the artist De Kooning whose later works were produced while drunk or after had lost his reason. He talks of the separation of consciousness and self, and quotes Lear’s ‘Methinks I should know you,’ reason failing to recognise its link to memory.
Now we are getting somewhere, you think, but Ignatieff spoils such speculation with this nonsense:
(Mother) ‘"I see him walking through the gates of truth."
‘My brother went still. I knew he could see himself as she saw him: a small child, between two ruined columns reaching up into the sky, among the flames and smoke of some great destruction, a child frozen between the weight of the columns, unable to move, within the gates of truth.’
The philosophising can be heavy-going, particularly a lecture given by the narrator that must have had his Rotarian audience comatose in the aisles, but the intended message so far as I can discern was to glory in existence, not to believe one can overcome illness by will alone, nor to be stoical, just to be, to let it go.
What it’s really about is its solipsistic author, not really so interested in other members of his family, as in satisfying curiosity about himself. ‘My books, for example. I know why they’re no better than they are, whereas I can’t begin to explain why I myself am no better than I am.’
It turned out he was rather more interested in finding an explanation that I was.
‘There is only one reason to tell you this,’ he then writes and answers in justification, ‘What happens can never be anticipated .. can never be anything other than what it is.’
It seems a pretty lame response. Ignatieff’s final sentence in the acknowledgements is to insist the book ‘is a work of fiction. No resemblance to persons alive or dead is either stated or implied.’
Can one really believe this? The story-teller is unnamed, nor is his brother, or wife, or either parent although the book is dedicated to A.G.I and J.A.G.I. And the reason for telling the stories of these deaths is simple enough – to justify writing a novel.
Then, as if to bless the enterprise, Ignatieff introduces a Stephen Hawkins-like sage dying of motor neurone disease, who declares ‘Believe in the word’ a phrase repeated in case you missed it by his brother two pages later. ‘Go forth and write,’ they seem to say.
At its best, the book is poignant and challenging, observing small details of the mother’s illness and speculating about what elements of her personality and rationality remain locked within.
Her speech is like a child’s eraser board, that wipes out as records each word, the cells of her brain disconnected like the beads spilled from a necklace. She has been an amateur painter and art becomes her final language when the words have gone. This leads into interesting speculation by her philosopher son about the artist De Kooning whose later works were produced while drunk or after had lost his reason. He talks of the separation of consciousness and self, and quotes Lear’s ‘Methinks I should know you,’ reason failing to recognise its link to memory.
Now we are getting somewhere, you think, but Ignatieff spoils such speculation with this nonsense:
(Mother) ‘"I see him walking through the gates of truth."
‘My brother went still. I knew he could see himself as she saw him: a small child, between two ruined columns reaching up into the sky, among the flames and smoke of some great destruction, a child frozen between the weight of the columns, unable to move, within the gates of truth.’
The philosophising can be heavy-going, particularly a lecture given by the narrator that must have had his Rotarian audience comatose in the aisles, but the intended message so far as I can discern was to glory in existence, not to believe one can overcome illness by will alone, nor to be stoical, just to be, to let it go.
What it’s really about is its solipsistic author, not really so interested in other members of his family, as in satisfying curiosity about himself. ‘My books, for example. I know why they’re no better than they are, whereas I can’t begin to explain why I myself am no better than I am.’
It turned out he was rather more interested in finding an explanation that I was.
October 3, 2023
Contender for best of the year. Review forthcoming
August 29, 2021
I chose to read this novel in order to get another perspective on how Alzheimers affects those we love. This novel centres around a man who struggles to define his relationships with his mother, father, brother, wife, and mostly himself. He and his brother watch as their father struggles to take care of their mother who, in the book's timeline, quickly progresses through AD. He and his wife disagree on how often he should be visiting his parents and much he should take on. After his father dies, he takes over primary care and then he and his brother find their mom a home. But the story is less about his mom and her disease and more about him coming to terms with how she sees him and how he sees himself. He is so wrapped up in this identity crisis that he loses himself and his family. The book struck me as dated, and I believe it was written in the early 90s.
April 25, 2014
To be honest, I was looking for a tale of a descent into Alzheimer's - the loss of memory, the loss of identity, the gory days of dis-inhibition - and a family coming together with that tragedy. I was expecting a version of Em and The Big Hoom, but for Alzheimer's.
Major prolonged illness in the family can have two outcomes - it either brings everyone, even those drifting away, closer, or it just leads to an under-the surface fragile family disintegrating. While EATBH reinforced how the family sticks together, here you see the more Western and practical outlook and the relatively looser bonds that bind people disintegrating.
When the narrator starts spending his weekends at his parents' helping his parents as his Mother starts her descent into dementia, his wife complains about his absence every weekend. "I need to be there for my family" he says. "We're are your family, you fool" she answers. But I wonder what would have happened in EATBH if Jerry or his sister had been married (He stayed single). How do you reconcile the needs of your parents to that of your wife and children at such times? How do you choose?
This book was deeply personal as it brought back memories of Grandma in the final year of her life after Grandpa died; she went through a loss of memory, not able to remember or recognize people. And when she did, they were objects that were named correctly with no relation to her.
'She sits in the movie theatre of her own mind and she doesn't know what these images are or what her relation to them is supposed to be.'
In a way, it's like showing a distant relative to a child and asking 'do you know who this is?'. The child has to name a person, and does that with a detachment. It is a question of a database query to match a face to a name. There are no memories being invoked for the child to feel anything.
As he argues in the end, what happens when you lose your self or 'move out' of your self? Is this what would happen? You look at yourself, your memories from outside with no sense of any relation to them. And in a way, 'you' are now 'selfless'. There is no question of who 'you' are, and you aren't even in a state to answer the question. At the end, he argues, you go to the state of infanthood, just experiencing and not reflecting or remembering.
Major prolonged illness in the family can have two outcomes - it either brings everyone, even those drifting away, closer, or it just leads to an under-the surface fragile family disintegrating. While EATBH reinforced how the family sticks together, here you see the more Western and practical outlook and the relatively looser bonds that bind people disintegrating.
When the narrator starts spending his weekends at his parents' helping his parents as his Mother starts her descent into dementia, his wife complains about his absence every weekend. "I need to be there for my family" he says. "We're are your family, you fool" she answers. But I wonder what would have happened in EATBH if Jerry or his sister had been married (He stayed single). How do you reconcile the needs of your parents to that of your wife and children at such times? How do you choose?
This book was deeply personal as it brought back memories of Grandma in the final year of her life after Grandpa died; she went through a loss of memory, not able to remember or recognize people. And when she did, they were objects that were named correctly with no relation to her.
'She sits in the movie theatre of her own mind and she doesn't know what these images are or what her relation to them is supposed to be.'
In a way, it's like showing a distant relative to a child and asking 'do you know who this is?'. The child has to name a person, and does that with a detachment. It is a question of a database query to match a face to a name. There are no memories being invoked for the child to feel anything.
As he argues in the end, what happens when you lose your self or 'move out' of your self? Is this what would happen? You look at yourself, your memories from outside with no sense of any relation to them. And in a way, 'you' are now 'selfless'. There is no question of who 'you' are, and you aren't even in a state to answer the question. At the end, he argues, you go to the state of infanthood, just experiencing and not reflecting or remembering.
June 16, 2016
in its simplest form is the story of a man trying to deal with his mother's descent into mental incapacitation through what I presume is Alzheimer's, although that name isn't specifically used. It's the story of his relationship with his father, mother, brother and wife and family as the disease progresses and his ability or inability to cope with it and them. In some ways, it's a very straightforward story but at the same time, it can strike many chords with the reader. There were many moments when it reminded me of my own mother's struggles with it and it made me respect my father and sister's constant caring for her, while I, who lived across the country, only visited once or twice a year. It's a very short story but an excellent one. (4 stars)
June 11, 2014
I kept forgetting this was a novel, thinking it was a memoir, and hating the self-indulgent voice. Then I'd remember it was a novel and marvel at how well the voice was done. And how much I hated that voice. And I wondered why it made a difference to me, whether it was a novel or a memoir. Because the self-awareness of the author who invented the voice was so much more tolerable than horrible miserly self-indulgence of the voice of the protagonist?......It was interesting to think about why that mattered to me as a reader. So for that purpose it was good to have read this book.
Read
October 21, 2012I have no memory of this book. I must have read it in my sleep.
December 23, 2015
Writing style OK. Not a cheerful subject. Didn't feel it had a sufficiently interesting perspective to make it unique or likable. Author said he wrote it as a catharsis and it reads that way to me.
August 31, 2017
It was uneven writing...sometimes poignant, other times reading like a text book, which I found very distracting.
September 6, 2023
After finding Michael Ignatieff, as the author of an article on The Declaration of Independence, (~brushing up on American history for my dystopian YA novel~), and tremendously enjoying his writing, I decided to google him. Although most of his work is historical and political, in this rare fiction novel of his, a nameless narrator takes us through his experience from idolizing his Mother as a child to watching her crash and burn into severe dementia as an adult. Everyday, he loses more and more pieces of her, and with it, pieces of himself too.
Ignatieff poses BIG questions throughout this story, (which I can't help but to think is somewhat based on personal experience), forcing the reader into a rabbit hole of reflection. "Does understanding anything make a difference if there is nothing you can do to stop it from happening?" (197). How can we pull ourselves out of such lows, if not even making sense of it will make it all go away? Raise your hand if you've been there!!
Currently, I am experiencing a parent with a grave illness as well, while also heavily participating in her care, so this book hit close to my home for me. "I took my mother's hand, the bones and the black veins visible beneath the sere envelope of her skin," (168).
Although the narrator can be unlikeable at times, (somewhat of a pompous jerk ruining everything around him with his douche-baggery!), there wasn't a second that went by when I didn't feel empathy for what he was going through. "It was as if in my innocence, that there was such a thing as fate and that it could take a life and dismember it," (5).
On Michael's writing: He has a knack for beautiful prose, which drew me to his books to begin with. However (ut-oh), he over did it at times with his "as if" comparisons. Which, I am actually very appreciative of, because I find myself over-doing that in my writing too, as if I could capture the entire world in my poetic one liners! Also, the pacing felt off for some reason to me. If I had the time, it'd be nice to sit down and read it in one sitting to see if that's stays true, or it was because I read it in pieces over the course of a month.
All in all, I would recommend if you're looking for a somewhat short read with feels.
Ignatieff poses BIG questions throughout this story, (which I can't help but to think is somewhat based on personal experience), forcing the reader into a rabbit hole of reflection. "Does understanding anything make a difference if there is nothing you can do to stop it from happening?" (197). How can we pull ourselves out of such lows, if not even making sense of it will make it all go away? Raise your hand if you've been there!!
Currently, I am experiencing a parent with a grave illness as well, while also heavily participating in her care, so this book hit close to my home for me. "I took my mother's hand, the bones and the black veins visible beneath the sere envelope of her skin," (168).
Although the narrator can be unlikeable at times, (somewhat of a pompous jerk ruining everything around him with his douche-baggery!), there wasn't a second that went by when I didn't feel empathy for what he was going through. "It was as if in my innocence, that there was such a thing as fate and that it could take a life and dismember it," (5).
On Michael's writing: He has a knack for beautiful prose, which drew me to his books to begin with. However (ut-oh), he over did it at times with his "as if" comparisons. Which, I am actually very appreciative of, because I find myself over-doing that in my writing too, as if I could capture the entire world in my poetic one liners! Also, the pacing felt off for some reason to me. If I had the time, it'd be nice to sit down and read it in one sitting to see if that's stays true, or it was because I read it in pieces over the course of a month.
All in all, I would recommend if you're looking for a somewhat short read with feels.
August 18, 2023
A heavy but beautiful book about a man who is losing his mother to early-onset dementia, and is burdened with the knowledge he might be genetically predisposed as well. It's fiction, but reads almost like a memoir at times.
The early chapters of this novel contain some of the most striking, memorable settings I've come across - I can picture the house and the narrator's family perfectly. The heat of summer, the studio at the bottom of the hill, the radio in the kitchen - I loved being there, and I love how Ignatieff set the stage with just a few bold strokes, like photos in a slide show. It is precisely because of those early scenes that I care about his mother, and about what happens to her. She is so wilful, so vibrant, that her early slippages are already unsettling.
Because it's such an intense and heavy story, I wanted to stay in the story-world and see how the narrator deals with his own fear and grief. Unfortunately, he intellectualizes everything. This is very much in character, but it created distance between the story and the reader. If someone is experiencing very intense emotions, I'd rather feel the emotions than read a treatise on dementia, if you know what I mean. Yet, towards the end, the narrator becomes more and more concerned with philosophical questions of selfhood, art, and being, and what happens to these things after we "lose our minds," so to speak. Interesting stuff, but a barrier to staying with the emotion of the plot.
Of course, this is exactly what the narrator himself is aiming for: he doesn't want to feel, and he really can't cope, so he is numbing himself by writing and looking at the situation from a rational and philosophical angle. It's understandable, but as a reader it didn't quite work for me.
Nonetheless, I was thinking of this book even when I wasn't reading it, and I know I won't forget that house and this family. For that reason, it's still a 4-star book for me.
The early chapters of this novel contain some of the most striking, memorable settings I've come across - I can picture the house and the narrator's family perfectly. The heat of summer, the studio at the bottom of the hill, the radio in the kitchen - I loved being there, and I love how Ignatieff set the stage with just a few bold strokes, like photos in a slide show. It is precisely because of those early scenes that I care about his mother, and about what happens to her. She is so wilful, so vibrant, that her early slippages are already unsettling.
Because it's such an intense and heavy story, I wanted to stay in the story-world and see how the narrator deals with his own fear and grief. Unfortunately, he intellectualizes everything. This is very much in character, but it created distance between the story and the reader. If someone is experiencing very intense emotions, I'd rather feel the emotions than read a treatise on dementia, if you know what I mean. Yet, towards the end, the narrator becomes more and more concerned with philosophical questions of selfhood, art, and being, and what happens to these things after we "lose our minds," so to speak. Interesting stuff, but a barrier to staying with the emotion of the plot.
Of course, this is exactly what the narrator himself is aiming for: he doesn't want to feel, and he really can't cope, so he is numbing himself by writing and looking at the situation from a rational and philosophical angle. It's understandable, but as a reader it didn't quite work for me.
Nonetheless, I was thinking of this book even when I wasn't reading it, and I know I won't forget that house and this family. For that reason, it's still a 4-star book for me.
July 28, 2024
Another book, another 4 out of 5. Following two affecting books about cancer (Peter Benson, Roddy Doyle), this one kept up the medical theme as possibly the best of the trio. Ignatieff is a Canadian politician-meets-author, who has written several non-fiction works of history. 'Scar Tissue' felt so personal I found myself thinking of it as memoir. The insights into a son's churning emotional responses to dementia at the very least draw parallels to what I remember of my Grandma's Alzheimer's. Swirling around the island of stillness and present-day confusion in Ignatieff's mother, we see those who love her caught up in marital strains, snappy frustration, sorrowful longing, and switches between denial and pragmatic acceptance. There were moments here like lightning flashback to a remembered but silted-over reality.
It made me think of a (later) film starring another Canadian - Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind - where Jim Carrey races through vanishing and torch-darkened rooms to hold on to a fading memory. The book too has moments of beauty, even as the hard science of scarred brain tissue underscores the harsh determinism of Ignatieff's ending.
It made me think of a (later) film starring another Canadian - Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind - where Jim Carrey races through vanishing and torch-darkened rooms to hold on to a fading memory. The book too has moments of beauty, even as the hard science of scarred brain tissue underscores the harsh determinism of Ignatieff's ending.
May 4, 2020
I had only heard of Ignatieff as an academic and politician, so I was curious to read his fiction when I stumbled across it. The man is a true polymath: his writing is excellent and he has a clear, consistent voice. I preferred the perspective of Still Alice in dealing with the dementia sufferer herself, but the son's perspective was touching and made it relatable as I worry about my own mother's memory. I also appreciated the more academic philosophical musings through the narrator's exploration on the theme of self and stoicism and whether life is worth living in such a state.
December 9, 2023
An interesting, sad account of a son’s experiences after his mother is diagnosed with dementia. The narrator has a brother who is a doctor who lives some distance away from his mother and the narrator.
The narrator becomes obsessed with his mother’s mental transformation. His behaviour leads to a significant strain in his marriage as he spends more and more time with his increasingly dependent mother.
The novel starts to focus more on the narrator’s own quest for self-discovery.
A thought provoking read.
This book was shortlisted for the 1993 Booker Prize.
The narrator becomes obsessed with his mother’s mental transformation. His behaviour leads to a significant strain in his marriage as he spends more and more time with his increasingly dependent mother.
The novel starts to focus more on the narrator’s own quest for self-discovery.
A thought provoking read.
This book was shortlisted for the 1993 Booker Prize.
January 22, 2025
This is a moving novel about how the narrator deals with his mother's declining health from Alzheimer's and his relationships with his father, brother and his wife and children. Thrown into the mix are his viewpoints on serious and terminal diseases and the trend towards psychoneuroimmunology (where the psychological state of mind many affect the body's immune system). At the core of the novel is how healthy people perceive family and acquaintances who are seriously ill and how their beliefs and relationships with the sick may significantly impact their personal lives.
August 24, 2021
Classified as a novel, but feels like a memoir. There’s no way to tell how much is based on the author’s personal experiences. The narrating character struggles, with limited success, to cope with his mother’s Alzheimer’s. Unfortunately, two of the most frequently used words in this book are “I” and “me”. It’s all about how his mother’s condition affects him, not how it affects her.
May 16, 2023
Brilliantly written and moving book about the narrator's mother living with and ultimately dying of Alzheimer's. It explores the issues of when a person is still a 'person' and the value of consciousness for its own sake even when a person cannot do anything.
December 10, 2023
Incredibly well written. Powerful and emotionally turbulent. For anyone who has witnessed the struggles of loosing ones mind, capabilities, and self..be prepared to go through it with this one. I cried in multiple chapters.
November 6, 2025
A moving, authentically written story about losing a parent to Alzheimer’s, so honestly portrayed that I wondered at several points how autobiographical it was. Sadly, this is mostly out of print in the UK, but still available if you search for a secondhand copy online.
March 31, 2020
good but rough...brought to mind nana
July 14, 2021
A rather sad story of a son watching his mother slowly fall into the grasp of dementia and how his life seems to fall apart trying to understand why. Very sad ending.
February 1, 2011
"I could call this the history of my family as the history of our characteristic illness. I could also call it the history of an illness as the history of one family", says Michael Ignatieff at the outset of his novel Scar Tissue. Although the author has built himself a reputation as a scholarly historian, biographer and culture chronicler, this book is by no means a vapid academic exercise. To the contrary, in barely 200 pages the author paints a very personal and infernal journey to the extremities of human life.
The book can be read in different ways. First it is a detailed account of the dynamics of a particular pathology. The narrator describes step by step how his mother is overpowered by a mysterious illness and how it gradually dismantles her personality. Here, Ignatieff's prose can be very moving. The description of his youth is suffused with a fragile, arcadian light, contrasting effectively with the searching, melancholy figures of father and mother. The dramatic clair-obscur is tastefully woven into the fabric of the whole novel and lends a poetic tension to the work.
Additionally, the confrontation with a devastating neurological illness forms the basis for a compelling philosophical investigation. In this sense, the book draws the contours of a few classical questions in personality theory. What is a person? When has someone reached the point of psychic regression where the 'I' has been dissolved? Can human identity be reduced to a particular neurochemical balance, or is there more than only organic substance? In Scar Tissue, Michael Ignatieff explicitly confronts two distinct philosophical positions - materialism and idealism - with the mystery of life and death. The narrator, philosopher, and his brother, neurophysiologist, are proxy for these two different types of rationality: "As my father used to say, 'Your brother has a propositional intelligence.' Meaning he had a way of reasoning that viewed ordinary life and its problems from an altitude of 40,000 feet. Whereas, my father said, I had 'an autobiographical intelligence', which was his way of saying I had a scatty female mind, interested in gossip and personal details and stories and character, things he didn't have time for.' So, a Platonic, conceptual and scientific way of thinking and an Aristotelian, pragmatic and context-sensitive rationality are crushing their teeth on the abyssmal problem of fate and death. Maybe, at the end of the story, we are witness to some sort of synthesis: "Human identity is neurochemical. Infinitely small amounts of neurotransmitter fluid, microscopic levels of electrical charge make the difference between selfhood and loss. Sanity is finely poised. Fate is measured in pica-litres. On the other hand, fate is beautiful. Feel the slow beating descent of its black wings.'
The book's finale may seem a little contrived: pushed completely out of his existential balance, the narrator undertakes a radical quest for selflessness, an intentional destruction of his own person, into a state of pure emptiness. However, it seems to me this is another level at which Scar Tissue can be read: ultimately, in its appeal to the symbolism of death and rebirth, the story develops a logic akin to an initiation rite. Ignatieff's state of pure vacancy and selflessness corresponds to the embryonic condition, a prerequisite for each regeneration (Mircea Eliade's The Sacred and the Profane is useful background reading here). On the final page, the author prepares for the final part of the journey: "But I know that there is a life beyond this death, a time beyond this time. I know that at the very last moment, when everything I ever knew has been effaced from my mind, when pure vacancy has taken possession of me, then light of the purest whiteness will stream in through my eyes into the radiant and empty plain of my mind." And then back to the magnificent motto from the hand of John Milton:
"So by this infirmity may I be perfected, by this completed. So in this darkness, may I be clothed in light."
The book can be read in different ways. First it is a detailed account of the dynamics of a particular pathology. The narrator describes step by step how his mother is overpowered by a mysterious illness and how it gradually dismantles her personality. Here, Ignatieff's prose can be very moving. The description of his youth is suffused with a fragile, arcadian light, contrasting effectively with the searching, melancholy figures of father and mother. The dramatic clair-obscur is tastefully woven into the fabric of the whole novel and lends a poetic tension to the work.
Additionally, the confrontation with a devastating neurological illness forms the basis for a compelling philosophical investigation. In this sense, the book draws the contours of a few classical questions in personality theory. What is a person? When has someone reached the point of psychic regression where the 'I' has been dissolved? Can human identity be reduced to a particular neurochemical balance, or is there more than only organic substance? In Scar Tissue, Michael Ignatieff explicitly confronts two distinct philosophical positions - materialism and idealism - with the mystery of life and death. The narrator, philosopher, and his brother, neurophysiologist, are proxy for these two different types of rationality: "As my father used to say, 'Your brother has a propositional intelligence.' Meaning he had a way of reasoning that viewed ordinary life and its problems from an altitude of 40,000 feet. Whereas, my father said, I had 'an autobiographical intelligence', which was his way of saying I had a scatty female mind, interested in gossip and personal details and stories and character, things he didn't have time for.' So, a Platonic, conceptual and scientific way of thinking and an Aristotelian, pragmatic and context-sensitive rationality are crushing their teeth on the abyssmal problem of fate and death. Maybe, at the end of the story, we are witness to some sort of synthesis: "Human identity is neurochemical. Infinitely small amounts of neurotransmitter fluid, microscopic levels of electrical charge make the difference between selfhood and loss. Sanity is finely poised. Fate is measured in pica-litres. On the other hand, fate is beautiful. Feel the slow beating descent of its black wings.'
The book's finale may seem a little contrived: pushed completely out of his existential balance, the narrator undertakes a radical quest for selflessness, an intentional destruction of his own person, into a state of pure emptiness. However, it seems to me this is another level at which Scar Tissue can be read: ultimately, in its appeal to the symbolism of death and rebirth, the story develops a logic akin to an initiation rite. Ignatieff's state of pure vacancy and selflessness corresponds to the embryonic condition, a prerequisite for each regeneration (Mircea Eliade's The Sacred and the Profane is useful background reading here). On the final page, the author prepares for the final part of the journey: "But I know that there is a life beyond this death, a time beyond this time. I know that at the very last moment, when everything I ever knew has been effaced from my mind, when pure vacancy has taken possession of me, then light of the purest whiteness will stream in through my eyes into the radiant and empty plain of my mind." And then back to the magnificent motto from the hand of John Milton:
"So by this infirmity may I be perfected, by this completed. So in this darkness, may I be clothed in light."
April 11, 2024
FWRC. Gord
Story about trials of alzhemizers. I have a vague recall.
Story about trials of alzhemizers. I have a vague recall.
May 10, 2011
It's election day in Canada. In preparation for this, I wanted to read a book by one of the party leaders. The only one that found it's way to my hand was Scar Tissue by Michael Ignatieff leader of the Federal Liberal Party.
While he may be a very good and convincing author, it's unfortunate that he couldn't transfer this to his leadership. At this hour, it's pretty clear that he is not going to become the leader of the opposition.
This book does not deal with politics at all, unless you want to consider family politics. This is the story of how two sons deal with their mother's mental deterioration due to Alzheimer's. This is a cruel ailment that slowly erodes those parts that make make up a person, their memories, emotions and even their habits. The brothers deal with it in different ways. One is a doctor and his is a very clinical approach. He knows he can't save his mother, but hopes that by conducting his research into her case, he can learn and help spare others. The other is an academic who continues to grasp at any bit of recognition his mother shows, even the barest glimmer.
This book rang very true to me. For years I watched the changes in my grandfather, and while he would have moments where his memories would break through, they became very few in his last few weeks. As with the brothers in this story, it was heartbreaking to watch my grandmother visit with him and he didn't recognize her.
I felt that this book was very well researched, not just from a medical standpoint, but also from the patients point of view. Mr. Ignatieff carried on a lengthy correspondence with Maurice des Mazes who I will assume was living with Alzheimer's.
While he may be a very good and convincing author, it's unfortunate that he couldn't transfer this to his leadership. At this hour, it's pretty clear that he is not going to become the leader of the opposition.
This book does not deal with politics at all, unless you want to consider family politics. This is the story of how two sons deal with their mother's mental deterioration due to Alzheimer's. This is a cruel ailment that slowly erodes those parts that make make up a person, their memories, emotions and even their habits. The brothers deal with it in different ways. One is a doctor and his is a very clinical approach. He knows he can't save his mother, but hopes that by conducting his research into her case, he can learn and help spare others. The other is an academic who continues to grasp at any bit of recognition his mother shows, even the barest glimmer.
This book rang very true to me. For years I watched the changes in my grandfather, and while he would have moments where his memories would break through, they became very few in his last few weeks. As with the brothers in this story, it was heartbreaking to watch my grandmother visit with him and he didn't recognize her.
I felt that this book was very well researched, not just from a medical standpoint, but also from the patients point of view. Mr. Ignatieff carried on a lengthy correspondence with Maurice des Mazes who I will assume was living with Alzheimer's.
October 22, 2011
(7/10) Ignatieff isn't the greatest author in the world, but he's a damn sight better at it than being a political leader. While a bit too brainy for its own good at times, Scar Tissue is a moving novel about the experience of dementia and how it consumes and devastates not just the life of the sufferer, the narrator's mother, but also the unnamed narrator himself, who becomes wholly taken up by the position of caregiver and ultimately left empty. The frigid rationality of the narrator is first established and then disrupted before being discarded as useless. This is a novel of Big Ideas, with all the breaks from realism but genuinely interesting intellectual inquiry that entails.
There's probably an alternate universe in which Ignatieff became a prolific fiction writer, with a career full of minor literary celebrity and occasional spots on CanLit syllabi, and never went down the path of neoliberal war cheerleader. All we have left of that alternative is Scar Tissue and a few even more obscure books. I read this in a course on aging and fiction alongside Soucouyant, a book with a similar plot and ideas that I enjoyed more. I would reccomend that one first, but Scar Tissue is still a fine little novel in its own right.
There's probably an alternate universe in which Ignatieff became a prolific fiction writer, with a career full of minor literary celebrity and occasional spots on CanLit syllabi, and never went down the path of neoliberal war cheerleader. All we have left of that alternative is Scar Tissue and a few even more obscure books. I read this in a course on aging and fiction alongside Soucouyant, a book with a similar plot and ideas that I enjoyed more. I would reccomend that one first, but Scar Tissue is still a fine little novel in its own right.
July 23, 2016
I love discovering the treasures on my bookshelves. All the books waiting patiently for me to discover their stories, and I have no idea what is in store for me with each one I open to read.
This was one of those surprises. This is a story about the experience of dementia and how it consumes and devastates not just the life of the sufferer, but the families who love and care for them. I had to remind myself several times that this was not a memoir, but a novel so well written that anyone who has ever cared for someone who have suffered from some form of dementia could relate to. This book also took interesting perspectives on it, from the emotional and scientific sides, the unknowns, the pain of losing someone bits at a time, and the search for meaning in it all when there are so many unanswerable questions.
Once I started reading this story, I was consumed by it. Another amazing read. I wish the author would write more literary fiction, I would eagerly read more.
This was one of those surprises. This is a story about the experience of dementia and how it consumes and devastates not just the life of the sufferer, but the families who love and care for them. I had to remind myself several times that this was not a memoir, but a novel so well written that anyone who has ever cared for someone who have suffered from some form of dementia could relate to. This book also took interesting perspectives on it, from the emotional and scientific sides, the unknowns, the pain of losing someone bits at a time, and the search for meaning in it all when there are so many unanswerable questions.
Once I started reading this story, I was consumed by it. Another amazing read. I wish the author would write more literary fiction, I would eagerly read more.
December 11, 2014
Ignatieff's novel examines dementia from various lenses. The narrator/protagonist is a philosophy professor who considers how dementia exposes the dynamic interconnections among identity, relationship and existence. His only other sibling is a brother who is a neurobiologist. As a scientist, his take is more mechanical--documenting how the disease progresses through brain tissue. The person with dementia is their mother, who has early onset dementia. She is a painter in addition to being a wife, a mother and a grandmother.
The book is thoughtful, lyric, gritty, messy and at times very sweet. I have been reading books about dementia for the past four years, and I can't believe it took me this long to find this one. It's very thought provoking. The author is Canadian, and he's spent years working in England. But this novel is set in the US.
The book is thoughtful, lyric, gritty, messy and at times very sweet. I have been reading books about dementia for the past four years, and I can't believe it took me this long to find this one. It's very thought provoking. The author is Canadian, and he's spent years working in England. But this novel is set in the US.
May 27, 2012
Ignatieff’s novel hinges around his mother’s slow death from neurological illness but for me was really a philosophical study on loss, selfhood and death and possibly (I hope I am not being unkind) his fear about losing his own intelligence. He throws in a bit of poorly developed characterisation (his six month ‘affair’ with his mother’s Filipina care worker and in particular the way in which he breaks up from her is (unwittingly) hilarious) and makes a half hearted attempt to bring in science and religion as counterbalance through the protagonists neurologist brother and one of his brothers patients but in the end it’s all about the final third where he explores whether there can be meaning in an uncontrolled ending to life. Don’t expect too much novel and you’ll quite enjoy it.
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