Reviews for Remind Me Who I Am, Again

The average rating for Remind Me Who I Am, Again based on 2 reviews is 2.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2019-09-07 00:00:00 Joshua Arledge A daughter writing a memoir about her mother's Alzheimer, the relationship between the two, and the family history? It sounds like something I would be very keen to read; however I have some very complicated feelings about this book. The heartbreak over seeing someone completely losing themselves is very real and touching; and the decision to write about it is just as touching. But Linda Grant writes about her egotistical mother in an equally egotistical way; it felt like she's trying to expose her mother for what she really is, trying to convert her mother's many friends into seeing the real her. Which felt strangely cruel, and a bit of a pointless exercise, especially since there were no insights to their relationship - it felt like Grant was writing with a bit of a stiff upper lip, just recounting all the emotional abuse as it happened. But this is not the 8 o'clock news and doesn't make for a very good memoir.

Review # 2 was written on 2010-08-07 00:00:00 Mary Jo Birgensmith 'Remind Me Who I Am, Again' is a memoir written by Linda Grant about her mother who suffers from vascular dementia (which is brought about by a series of small strokes). It's a bit of a English Jewish family history going back a couple of generations, complete with old B&W photos (but only in the beginning). But mostly, it's about Ms. Grant's troubled history with her mother and how dementia compounds those problems. It tends to ramble, and the family history bits aren't written in a way that would necessarily be interesting to a non-family member. There are bits in the middle where she appears to get lazy and just quotes her journal, all in italics and fragmentary sentences. And there are sections in the end which just throw in random family members and their history and that's pretty boring. But Ms. Grant has a charming and informal if frantic style of writing, so I found RMWIAA relatively easy to read, despite a sometimes irritating unawareness. Despite all the research she's apparently done (and she quotes it in a style reminiscent of a high school essay), she's unable to attribute her mother's (atrocious) behaviour to brain damage, and instead keeps blaming it all on her personality and a return to a "childish" stage. Then again, if I had a mother like that, maybe I wouldn't be able to look past it either. Either way, I wish it had been edited (hello Granta editor) and presented more evenly and interestingly because Ms. Grant does have writing talent and stories to tell. I got through this one only because of my interest in stories about memory loss, but wouldn't have otherwise.