A stunning first novel, both literary and thriller, about a retired orthopedic surgeon with dementia, Turn of Mind has already received worldwide attention. With unmatched patience and a pulsating intensity, Alice LaPlante brings us deep into a brilliant woman’s deteriorating mind, where the... read more
“Perhaps this is heaven? To wander among a multitude and have a name for each.”Jennifer
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.Highlighted by 102 Kindle customers
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.Highlighted by 92 Kindle customers
Funny how at the end of life things accelerate at a pace beyond our ability to process them.Highlighted by 81 Kindle customers
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.Highlighted by 69 Kindle customers
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?Highlighted by 68 Kindle customers
But ambition is not success. It’s something else. It’s a striving, not an achieving.Highlighted by 54 Kindle customers
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.Highlighted by 44 Kindle customers
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.Highlighted by 40 Kindle customers
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.Highlighted by 25 Kindle customers
We’re hiding the table of contents, errata, movie connections, books that influenced this book, books influenced by this book, books that cite this book and books cited by this book sections. If you would like to add content to them, you must first make them visible.