Turn of Mind (2011) (edit title/settings)

Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit see section history

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Characters edit see section history

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• Dr. Jennifer White: The novel's protagonist, formerly a renowned orthopedic surgeon, now suffering from the early stages of dementia
• Amanda O'Toole: Jennifer's best friend recently discovered murdered in her home.
• James: Jennifer's lawyer husband
• Peter: Amanda's husband
• Mark White: Jennifer's son
• Fiona White: Jennifer's daughter
• Magdalena: Jennifer's caregiver
• Laura: Add a description of this character.
• Christopher: Laura's husband, a very nice man. He and Laura eventually divorce over a young paramour of his.
• Dr. Tsien: Good friend and mentor of Jennifer's, a specialist in internal medicine.
• Detective Luton: police officer investigating Amanda's murder
• Joan Connor: Jennifer's attorney

Quotes edit see section history

• “Perhaps this is heaven? To wander among a multitude and have a name for each.”

  Jennifer

• “Sometimes you want the outside world to match your interior reality, you said to James once, trying to explain why you loved thunderstorms.”

• Popular Highlights from Kindle Customers

• The secret of a happy marriage: not honesty, not forgiveness, but acceptance that is a kind of respect for the other’s right to make mistakes. Or rather, the right to make choices. Choices you can’t be sorry for, because they were the right ones. So I never apologized. And so the matter died between us, but with it something else. Not enough to bring down the tree of our marriage, but a bough did fall that didn’t grow back.

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• When thinking over one’s life, it’s the extreme moments that stand out. The peaks and the valleys. He was one of the highest peaks. In some ways looming larger than James. If James was a central mountain in the landscape of my life, then this other was a pinnacle of a different sort. Higher, sharper. You couldn’t build upon its fragile precipices. But the view was spectacular.

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• Funny how at the end of life things accelerate at a pace beyond our ability to process them.

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• That whole time of year, autumn, I find exhilarating. A passionate season. The others are so bland. In the fall, you see opportunities for change. Real change. Possibilities present themselves. None of the renewal and redemption clichés of spring. No. Something darker and more primal and more important than that.

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• What is forgiveness but the ability to accept what someone has done and not hold it against them? But to forgive, something has to touch you personally. This hasn’t touched me. That’s why I stopped believing in God. Who could worship someone that narcissistic, who takes everything anyone does as a personal affront?

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• But ambition is not success. It’s something else. It’s a striving, not an achieving.

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• This half state. Life in the shadows. As the neurofibrillary tangles proliferate, as the neuritic plaques harden, as synapses cease to fire and my mind rots out, I remain aware. An unanesthetized patient.

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• Hate is a powerful emotion, our young leader says. Ask a dementia patient who she loves, and she draws a blank. Ask her who she hates, and the memories come flooding in.

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• prosopagnosia, my inability to distinguish one face from another, is getting worse. I cannot hold on to features, so when a person is in front of me, I study them. To try to do what every six-month-old child is capable of doing: separate the known from the unknown.

  Highlighted by 30 Kindle customers

• There’s nothing worse than betrayal, she had said. And, When trust is gone, so is respect. Actually, I told her, there are a lot of things worse than betrayal. And respect always precedes trust to the door.

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Setting & Locations edit see section history

• Chicago
• Philadelphia
• Sheffield

First Sentence edit see section history

Themes & Symbolism edit see section history

• Hands: Describe this theme.

Series & Lists edit see section history

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. Alice LaPlante (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Awards edit see section history

• California Book Award (2012: First Fiction, Gold)
• Macavity Awards (2012: Best First Mystery Novel)

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: Add the Library of Congress Classification.
• Dewey: 813.6

Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Literature & Fiction › Literary

More Books Like This edit see section history