Publishers Weekly
★ 04/03/2023
In this propulsive memoir, cardiologist Jauhar (Heart: A History) delivers an aching account of “the hardest journey ever taken” as he witnessed his father, Prem’s, health, personality, and cognition get subsumed by Alzheimer’s. The closeness between Jauhar, his brother Rajiv, and sister Suneeta—all doctors—was strained by debates regarding care and end of life decision-making. “I learned long ago that families break down over these issues,” Rajiv observes as Jauhar resisted placing Prem, a world-class scientist and geneticist, in assisted living after his wife’s death. Jauhar layers the narrative with research about Alzheimer’s, a look at a groundbreaking “dementia village” in the Netherlands, interrogations of ideas like “therapeutic deception” (playing along with a patient’s beliefs), and existential quandaries about whether losing one’s memories constitutes losing one’s identity. Jauhar masterfully depicts the siblings’ fractious despair as he, clinging to hope, pushed for one more intervention as Prem’s death approached. The author’s brutal honesty—about his father’s decline and his own inability to fully reckon with it—is expertly complemented by his medical rigor. Every family who’s ever faced an Alzheimer’s diagnosis will see themselves in this exceptional work. Agent: Todd Shuster, Aevitas Creative Management. (Apr.)
From the Publisher
[My Father’s Brain] excels in its clear scientific explanations of what happens in the brain as dementia progresses and in its authentic descriptions of the sheer hell of it for all concerned . . . deeply moving, especially when [Sandeep] Jauhar describes his own sense of confusion about how to do the right thing as his father declines.” —Bee Wilson, Financial Times
"A fascinating mixture of the medical and the personal . . . [Full of] transcendent moments." —Alexandra Jacobs, The New York Times
“Poignant and illuminating . . . piercingly honest.” —Laurie Hertzel, Minneapolis Star Tribune
"Anyone who’s been a family caregiver, or has a loved one with the disease, will relate to [Jauhar], who describes his family’s long, difficult journey with tenderness and candor." —AARP magazine
"[An] intimate medical memoir . . . [Jauhar's] honest writing makes this a painful but important read for anyone who has lost a friend or relative to Alzheimer’s." —Sophie McBain, The New Statesman
"[An] incisive memoir." —The New Yorker
"Jauhar sincerely and personally details the transformation of his father’s and his family’s life after the diagnosis, detailing the messy realities of such a diagnosis and what it entails for a family . . . This moving book instills empathy, understanding, and curiosity in its reader, and I could not recommend it more." —Katherine Schoeffler, World Literature Today
"[My Father's Brain] has to be one of the best memoirs on illness by doctors . . . The force of the inevitability of life, and its end, as seen through his experience, is nothing short of enlightening, gutting and humbling." —Kinshuk Gupta, Mint
"In this propulsive memoir, [Jauhar] delivers an aching account of 'the hardest journey [he has] ever taken' as he witnessed his father, Prem’s, health, personality, and cognition get subsumed by Alzheimer’s . . . The author’s brutal honesty—about his father’s decline and his own inability to fully reckon with it—is expertly complemented by his medical rigor. Every family who’s ever faced an Alzheimer’s diagnosis will see themselves in this exceptional work." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Painful yet affecting . . . difficult to put down." —Kirkus Reviews
"With Heart: A History and other books, Sandeep Jauhar established himself as one of our most insightful, readable, and humane physician-authors. With My Father’s Brain, his work becomes still more essential. Blending the humor, compassion, and absorbing family drama of first-rate memoir with expert science writing, he has composed a can’t-miss introduction to what has been called The Age of Alzheimer’s." —Sanjay Gupta, author of Keep Sharp and World War C
“These pages will be a blessing to families dealing with Alzheimer’s. Jauhar’s prose is insightful, honest and moving about a condition that most of us will inevitably encounter in our lifetimes." —Abraham Verghese, author of Cutting for Stone
"My Father's Brain is at once a deeply affecting memoir and a profoundly instructive primer about a malady that now affects many millions of people." —Amitav Ghosh, author of Flood of Fire and The Nutmeg's Curse
"My Father's Brain is honest and compelling, combining the professional and the personal in a story that is both gripping and desperately sad. Anyone who has loved and cared for someone with dementia will recognize their own creeping realization that something is wrong: the attempts to explain away bizarre behaviors, the moments of frustration and shame, the 'traitorous eye rolls' made by Jauhar as he tried to convey to strangers that his father 'was no longer himself and it was not my fault.' Sandeep Jauhar is unsparing in his analysis of his own response to his father's illness, and does not offer trite solutions, but he describes what happened—there are sharply observed scenes of family discord about the care of his father in his final days—and his honesty makes this a book that will give others what we sometimes need most: the knowledge that we are not alone." —Lucy Pollock, author of The Book About Getting Older
"From the unflinchingly honest perspective of a compassionate doctor and loving son, My Father's Brain offers an unprecedented portrait of the insidious ravages of dementia and the terrifying vicissitudes of chronic neurologic disease. It delivers a page-turning narrative as haunting as it is inspiring and as devastating as it is deeply moving. Essential reading for every child of a mother or father in the twilight of life." —Cody Keenan, former Chief Speechwriter for President Barack Obama and author of Grace: President Obama and Ten Days in the Battle for America
Kirkus Reviews
2023-01-19
A doctor and bestselling writer chronicles his father’s battle with dementia.
Jauhar, a cardiologist and author of Interned, Doctored, and Heart, begins with the revelation that his father, Prem, a world-class geneticist in his 70s, was forgetting more than usual. Prem noted that forgetting is a normal part of aging, but while waiting for a doctor’s appointment, the author asked what they ate for lunch, and he couldn’t remember. In a testing session, Prem counted backward from 100 by sevens and wrote a sentence correctly but failed to spell world backward or draw a clock with the time 11:10. The diagnosis was mild cognitive impairment—mental functioning “worse than expected for his age.” MCI affects about 1 in 5 elderly adults, 20% of which will progress to Alzheimer’s. Readers will know the outcome but continue to turn the pages as Jauhar delivers a gripping account of Prem’s steady decline through the “seven stages” of Alzheimer’s. He was soon unable to manage his finances or remember details of his personal history. Within two years, he entered the middle stages, requiring help with daily activities such as dressing, and he became paranoid and suspicious and lost his way if he left the house. In the advanced stages, he was unable to walk alone or control his bowels and bladder, all of which led to a protracted period of being bedbound, incontinent, and refusing to eat. Unlike many Alzheimer’s patients, Prem remained at home, the consequence of a devoted extended family, plenty of money, and an incredibly dedicated helper. Besides his father’s story, Jauhar describes the disease’s history, its affect on the brain, and how America’s health care system deals—or fails to deal—with it. Caring for a dementia patient can cost families $80,000 per year, and medical-related bills lead to over half of bankruptcies. European nations do better, but there is little political support in the U.S. for reform.
A painful yet affecting read that is also difficult to put down.
