"The power of this graphic memoir is not that its story about a familydealing with Alzheimer's is so extraordinary, but that it has become soordinary.In her first book, Canadian writer and cartoonist Leavitt shows her motheragreeing to have her experiences with the disease documented because "[m]aybethis will help other families!" And likely it will, letting those experiencingthe dementia of someone they love know what to expect, and to reassure that thetangled emotions they feel in response--anger, frustration, devotion, humor--areinevitable.Though this is primarily an account of the author'sexperiences as her mother becomes all but emotionally unrecognizable, it isalso a narrative spanning two three generations of complicated familydynamics.Leavitt illustrates significant differences between her mother'scloseness with her sisters and how the disease affects those relationships, andthe contrasting tension between the author and her sister.It shows the strainsthat Alzheimer's puts on everything--from the sufferer's well being and sense ofpurpose to a loving marriage to the physical demands of caring for someone whocan no longer care for herself.The narrative is human, honest, loving andoccasionally even funny. "I created this book," Leavitt writes in theintroduction, "to remember her as she was before she got sick, but also toremember her as she was during her illness, the ways in which she wastransformed and the ways in which parts of her endured. As my mother changed, Ichanged too, forced to reconsider my own identity as a daughter and as an adultand to recreate my relationship with my mother.

"Not simply the story of a disease, but of the flawed, complex, intelligentpeople whose lives it transformed.".