Book #101: Turn of Mind

Title: Turn of Mind
Author: Alice LaPlante
Enjoyment Factor: 7/10
Source: Kindle for iPad
Referral: Amazon's "Recommended for You"

While reading Turn of Mind, I became fully convinced that I had Alzheimer's. Every time I had to wait a second to find the right word or forgot what I went into the laundry room looking for, and I just knew that I was going to end up in an assisted living center by age forty. My own neuroses aside, Alice LaPlante does a great job getting in the head of someone with Alzheimer's. If it's not accurate (I honestly don't know how accurate it is) then at least it's very convincing.

In Turn of Mind, Dr. Jennifer White has a good daughter, a bad son, a dead husband, and a recently-murdered best friend. She also has early-onset Alzheimer's, which has forced her to leave her job as a hand surgeon to be cared for first in her home and later in assisted living. Pretty soon, it becomes evident that Dr. White is the prime suspect in her friend's murder. It would have been pretty unbelievable to have her figure out who the real murderer was, which is what I was expecting would happen, so I was pleased to watch the story unfold without having her sleuth it out (in the other books I've read this summer where the protagonists have memory problems-- and I've read a few of them-- this is what has happened). Because Dr. White is not going to get better. She realizes this, and I think that ultimately her friend's murderer realizes the same thing. Turn of Mind is an interesting book written from a unique perspective. I found myself as surprised by the identity of the murderer as I was intrigued by Jennifer's descent into the fog of Alzheimer's.