Alice LaPlante Biography, Books, and Similar Authors

Interview

Q&A with BookBrowse members and Alice La Plante about her first novel, Turn of Mind

In June 2012, BookBrowse discussed Turn of Mind. Late in the discussion the author, Alice LaPlante, joined the conversation. Below is slightly edited version of the original Q&A.


Why did you tackle this difficult subject matter in your first book. Is there someone close to you who suffers from dementia?

My mother suffered from Alzheimer's. That's actually the first time I've used that sentence in past tense, as my mother died just last week. She'd been suffering from it for more than a decade. Although there's nothing autobiographical about the book (except my maternal grandparents have a brief cameo role), I learned a lot about the disease, both by researching it as much as I could when my mother was first diagnosed, and then by observation. It's truly a terrible disease.

When I was on book tour last summer, one member of the audience stood up and said, "it's the only disease in which your loved one dies twice." While it might not be the only disease with this horrible result, I've found the saying to be otherwise true, as I thought I had reconciled myself to losing my mother years ago when she stopped recognizing us and underwent radical personality shifts. Yet her death has been very ...