Book reviews: non-fiction from M.J. Fievre, John Miller and B Smith
The horror of Haiti, a feud within the early Mormon church, and the coming Alzheimer’s crisis are this week’s picks
by M.J. Fievre
Beating Windward Press (e-book)
This is a tormented memoir of violence in the home and country of M.J. Fievre’s childhood. Hers is a story of a difficult relationship with her father, a Jekyll-and-Hyde character given to rages, when he would threaten to kill his family, and with Haiti at a time of political turbulence in the years after Baby Doc Duvalier’s removal. In 1991, when Fievre was 10, former Catholic priest Jean-Bertrand Aristide, elected the previous year, was overthrown by the military. On the night of his exile, she writes, political prisoners were killed, “one bullet in each head”. There’s more death, and threat of such, as thugs, some former tontons macoutes (Duvalier’s personal police), menace families with machetes and guns. Fievre even keeps a list of random deaths in a Hello Kitty diary. Though brutal, these descriptions somehow pale in comparison to the episode in which Fievre, emboldened by a pocket knife, confronts her father, who, in his professional life, is a charming law teacher. She declares, “I hate you.” He replies, “You know where the guns are.” Stories, wonderfully paced, fill this book. They will give you the shivers.
by John Miller
Amazon Digital Services (e-book)
by B Smith and Dan Gasby
Random House Audio (audiobook)
Before I Forget makes the message clear: Alzheimer’s will affect increasing numbers of people the longer we live. In the US at least, a third of those aged 85 and above are afflicted by the disease (and African-Americans are twice as susceptible as Caucasians). The book, a personal account of how it has affected former model and TV personality B. Smith and her husband, Dan Gasby, allows readers to hear the points of view of both parties. She doesn’t believe she needs home-care help; her husband thinks otherwise. He also takes away her car keys, but this is something she doesn’t fight, even though losing the right to drive makes her angry. Underscored is the importance of seeking medical help sooner rather than later because the existing drugs seem to work only with patients who don’t yet have the disease. The authors also urge people to have a PET Imaging Diagnosis, which determines whether those memory lapses should be taken seriously. The book, read by the authors, helps to raise awareness that 2020 is the target date for managing Alzheimer’s – not curing or preventing it but keeping the disease in check.