Keeper: A Book About Memory, Identity, Isolation, Wordsworth and Cake ... - Softcover

Andrea Gillies's account of living with Alzheimer's is the perfect fusion of narrative with enough memorable science not to choke you. It's a fantastic book - down to earth and darkly comic in places. The judges found it compelling. --Jo Brand

A wonderful book honest, upsetting, tender, sometimes angry, often funny which takes us on a journey into dementia and explores what it means to be human. --Deborah Moggach

Terrific, terrifying, absolutely powerful in every choice of word, every sentence... completely unflinching --Quentin Cooper

This is not another guide to be added to the depressing pile by the bedside for those who are confronting the decline of a relative. It is as much an exploration of memory, its loss and the subsequent erosion of personality, as a chronicle of the destructive chaos that the onset of Alzheimer's unleashes on the extended family...
Somehow, despite the territory, Gillies manages to steer the book away from misery lit and beneath the profoundly bleak narrative runs a stream of grim humour. Most powerful, however, is Nancy's own voice, carefully recorded by Gillies in nightly diary entries, a voice that is at times cantankerous, bewildered and defiant. Reading these monologues, we get very close to understanding what it feels like to experience this illness... What makes this book so unexpected is the honesty with which Gillies records the catastrophic consequences of this well-intentioned act. --Amelia Gentleman, The Guardian

Terrific, terrifying, absolutely powerful in every choice of word, every sentence... completely unflinching --Quentin Cooper

Andrea Gillie's Keeper has just won the inaugural £25,000 Wellcome Trust Prize. The prize is open to outstanding works of fiction and non-fiction on the theme of health and medicine. Jo Brand, comedienne and former psychiatric nurse chaired the judging panel and made the announcement at an awards ceremony at the Wellcome Collection, London.