Aliceheimer’s

Sometimes funny, sometimes heart-breaking, each comic weaves in a different facet of [Dana and Alice's] shared experience: hallucinations, repetition, memory, loss, magic, and sometimes even time travel. --Meredith Rizzo, NPR Shots I am grateful for creators like Walrath . . . who make art from experiences like those my patients face. Their works remind us that, even during the throes of illness or grief, when the air is filled with questions, fear, and sadness, there are slivers of time and space where room can be made for wonder. --Lynda Montgomery, Los Angeles Review of Books Walrath offers an anthropological method for dealing with the disease. Observing Alice as if she belongs to an unfamiliar culture, Walrath relates to her in ways that respect her alternate reality. Her stories are mostly lighthearted; her drawings are whimsical, magical, surreal. --LaVonne Neff, The Christian Century Original in its collage approach, and buoyant in its message of how to 'bring back the humanity of a person with dementia'. . . . Aliceheimer's is a story about the possibility to find quality of life in dementia caregiving; the possibility to see Alzheimer's disease as creating a new self, a self that can be lived with and written about up to the moment when we feel threatened in our own self. --Martina Zimmermann, Medical Humanities Thoughtful, exploratory, and deeply loving. . . . A book about living with Alzheimer's that gives voice to both caretaker and, insofar as is possible, patient. In this dialogue, illustration helps Alice's actual words subvert empathic inaccuracy, and challenge our fears. --Emily Wojcik, Massachusetts Review [Aliceheimer's] offers a brand-new looking glass into Alzheimer's--one that, like Carroll's mirror, displays a parallel world rather than our own. Walrath dared to follow Alice down the rabbit hole of the disease and emerged with a courageous depiction of a fascinating world below. --Nancy Stearns Bercaw, Seven Days Dana Walrath's approach to memoir is unique in that she twists together multiple forms--the personal essay, drawings, collage. This approach, which offers the equivalent of memory snapshots presented from different angles, suggests value in appreciating the moment over the supposed stability of the traditional narrative trajectory of beginning, middle, end. Aliceheimer's echoes the spots of memory that are part of the Alzheimer's experience and presents end-of-life care in an original and ultimately comforting way. --Mita Mahato, University of Puget Sound Dana Walrath's images evoke Alice in a way that text alone cannot, creating a symbiotic relationship between text and image in this work. Walrath's style is gentle and specific, naive and yet quite sophisticated about the past and the present. --MK Czerwiec, coauthor of Graphic Medicine Manifesto A deeply moving, informative, and funny memoir by a woman watching her mother's descent into Alzheimer's disease. The collaged drawings are a perfect counterpoint to the writing. --Roz Chast, author of Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant?