This book is one that I'm glad I read. It opened my eyes to some topics and how to deal with them in a different way that I would have originally thought. A new to me author that I was drawn into the story and her writing style. I loved that she wrote it from personal experience as I think I got more out of it that way than I would have written differently.

"But Shivah wasn't mean for her disease, and as I watched Mother beak apart piece by piece, I grieved each sliver that fell to the ground. It was like mourning broken shards of glass. How does one mourn vestiges of a person? Whatever was left of Mother dissipated as quickly as the morning fog on the mountain: impenetrable and then gone. When the view cleared, I saw that there was increasingly little of Mother left."

Lisa Solod chronicles a fictional relationship between Leah, her two siblings, and their troubled, absent mother, an alcoholic with alzheimer's. The story takes a non-linear path, exploring how each sibling handles the shift in their relationship, learning to overcome the trauma and need for closure, to become care-givers and provide support to a woman who no longer has the ability to truly apologise.

There are sprinklings of Jewish culture throughout, with no final Shivah (a jewish mourning ritual) scene to commemorate the passing, but instead references and explanations of the process between memories. The book recognises the lack of linear passing and almost suggests this reflects the disease - there is no longer a beginning and an end, but instead a confused present.

A powerful read that will resonate for many, especially those still working through the long term implications of strained family relationships.

Thank you NetGalley for the Arc.

This is a woman's step-by-step recollection of dealing with her formerly abusive, narcissistic mother's descent into Alzheimers. Her relationships with her sisters has much friction, and she feels as though she has been shouldered with the responsibility of helping to caretake her mom , although the Mother is in an upscale retirement and memory unit facility.

Her palpable grief in coming to terms with the mother that was and the mother that is would be relatable to adult children of elderly parents, especially those parents who are a shadow of their former selves.