The Memory Book by Rowan Coleman

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



Rowan Coleman has been my favourite author for many years – I sometimes feel I have grown up with her characters, experienced love and motherhood with them, shared the exasperation of mothers, friends and husbands; I have laughed, loved and cried alongside them and every book has surpassed the previous one. Rowan writes about subjects that are close to everyone’s experiences and feelings and she makes the reader feel what her characters do and that is why The Memory Book, her latest work, is something really special.
From the minute we learn that Claire, a forty something year old woman, mum to two glorious girls, Caitlin, age 20 and Esther aged, has early-onset Alzheimer’s we know that this story is going to be a full-on onslaught on our emotions – and it is!
Claire is full of life; after being a single mum to Caitlin for 15 years she met Greg, a younger man, the only man she felt able to share her life and her daughter with and then baby Esther came along to complete their little family. When Claire starts to forget little things she is not oblivious to the signs for her dad died from Alzheimer’s but when Claire forgets the name of her daughter she knows it is serious. She is diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s and from then on she and her tight-knit little family know it is only a matter of time before they lose the mother, wife and daughter they love.
It’s hard to say who it is hardest for. Claire, who knows she is forgetting and will continue to do so; who can’t remember her darling Greg in the way she knows he deserves as a distance opens between them; who saw what her father went through and knows only too well the pain her mother went through in losing her husband and here she is putting her through it again; who knows that she will not be able to be the mother to Esther that she wants to be.
Ruth, Claire’s mother has seen it all played out with her husband and the pain of losing her daughter to the same horrendous disease is surely not to be born, to see her beloved only child slowly disintegrating and becoming a shadow of what she once was.
Caitlin has other things on her mind as well as squaring up to her mother’s diagnosis and trying to be a support to her, her gran, to Greg and looking out for Esther. And then there is the bombshell that Claire drops on her.
As for Greg, loving Claire like he has never loved, how can he bear to see her losing her knowledge of him, growing ever more distant as she struggles to find a way to keep him in her heart?
The Memory Book is Greg’s way of trying to pin down some of those memories that must disappear. It is a book for the whole family, for those special times they have shared and those memories that make a family what it is. As each member writes down what is and has been most important to them, we gain insight into the hearts and feelings of each character. Written in with joy and sadness, bound up with love and despair the memory book allows their thoughts and feelings to find a way to accept and to carry on being the family they need to be and ultimately shows their love for each other.
Rowan has absolutely got into the hearts of these characters, their anger, grief, fear, love, helplessness and positivity are palpable but mixed in with the sadness is humour and a great deal of warmth. She has described beautifully the heartache of having a loved one with such a terrible disease but she has also shown that there can be a light hearted side, a degree of humour to be found in the sadness, a poignancy that hits home. No reader will be able to distance themselves from this little group, their heartache will be yours, their tears will fill your eyes but their hope and love will fill you with a glow because it is really their love for each other that stands out, makes them who they are and makes them strong enough to support each other through the hard times and it is love that will always be there, no matter what.
One word of warning – make sure you have tissues to hand, you are sure to need them!






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