"This Will Be One Defeat; More Will Follow. Victories Will Follow Too. You Are Not In This Life To Count Up Victories And Defeats. You Are In It To Love And Be Loved. You Are Loved With Your Head Down. You Will Be Loved Whether You Finish Or Not."

So a couple weeks ago, I had gone up north to my cottage for a few days to get a few things done before beginning my new job. And sadly, I drove three hours home and accidentally left one bag behind which contained my book (fortunately, it didn't contain any perishables). So knowing that I wouldn't be reunited with Robinson Crusoe for ~two to three weeks, I decided to pick one of the non-list books on my shelf and motor through it before I would get back up north to retrieve the left-behind book. Normally, I hate doing this, reading more than one book at a time. For some reason I need to focus on one book, one story, one style of writing. And because I'm so fond of checking things off lists, I need to feel as though I accomplished one task before moving on to the next. But I had the free time and didn't want to squander it watching some dumb shit on tv when I could be happily reading away. 

So the book I grabbed was We Are Not Ourselves by Matthew Thomas. This book was a random selection at the bookstore a couple years ago and it has been languishing on my shelf. Why I thought it was wise to choose a 620 page novel, I'll never know, but it just felt like the right choice to move on to one that had been staring me in the face for years. And apparently, I can read 620 pages in 2 weeks. Go figure. 

We Are Not Ourselves is the six-decade spanning story of Eileen Leary (nee Tumulty) who grew up in Queens in the 1950s and 60s with Irish parents and an alcoholic mother. The book almost felt like there were two different halves to it - the story of her childhood and then shifting to the perspective of not just her, but her, her husband Ed, and their son Connell in the second half (some chapters would be told from their perspective instead of hers starting partway through the book). Her husband is a college science professor who certainly could have been slated for much greater things in his life but who feels a duty to stick to the small college he's at and positively impact the students he feels need it the most. And while Eileen rises through the ranks as a nurse and hospital administrator, all she wants in life is to move out of Jackson Heights into a sprawling mansion in the suburbs that will convey her status in life to others (in fact, she feels this way about many things in her life, not just the house...she wants fancier cars, she goes out and buys a mink coat because she hears another woman at the salon talking about it, etc). And while she manages to carve out the life she wants (against the strong protests of her husband), nothing is ever that simple, as Ed develops early-onset dementia. 

The way that Ed's dementia was presented was well done. There were gradual behavioral changes that may not have been obviously related to dementia, but as someone who has had a loved one with Alzheimer's, I knew the symptoms immediately and waited patiently for many more pages for the truth to be revealed to the characters themselves. The second half/last third of the book details Eileen and Connell's struggles with managing Ed's declining health and increasingly aberrant and difficult behavior. And while I've read at least one other novel about Alzheimer's since my grandfather passed away, it never gets easier to read situations that feel strikingly familiar. And reading this made me think really long and hard about the personal battles that my grandmother faced while caring for him. She shouldered that burden without asking for help and without complaint, but we as a family will never truly know the difficulties she faced every moment for years. And while I could have assumed what she was dealing with, I felt like reading this book pulled back the curtain on what the experience was most likely was for her. 

I enjoyed the book very much and was glad it was the one I chose. It's kind of astonishing that this was Matthew Thomas' debut novel. 

Last weekend, I was in fact reunited with Robinson Crusoe, so back to deserted island living for me. I'm going to have a full week (and then some) back up at the cottage in two weeks, so maybe I can use the same strategy and plan to finish this one by then so I can pick up something new. But damn, have I been enjoying reading this year. I don't know what fire got lit underneath me, but I read four and half books in the nine weeks that I was off from work and it really has me all sucked in. I keep staring longingly at the stack of books to read on my bookshelf just wanting to read them all! Devour all the books!!