Death in Slow Motion: A Memoir of a Daughter, Her Mother, and the Beast Called Alzheimer's

A raw, unsentimental and passionately written memoir about trying to care for a parent with Alzheimer’s

When her once-glamorous and witty novelist-mother got Alzheimer's, Eleanor Cooney moved her from her beloved Connecticut home to California in order to care for her. In tense, searing prose, punctuated with the blackest of humor, Cooney documents the slow erosion of her mother's mind, the powerful bond the two shared, and her own descent into drink and despair.

But the coping mechanism that finally serves this eloquent writer best is writing, the ability to bring to vivid life the memories her mother is losing. As her mother gropes in the gathering darkness for a grip on the world she once loved, succeeding only in conjuring sad fantasies of places and times with her late husband, Cooney revisits their true past. Death in Slow Motion becomes the mesmerizing story of Eleanor's actual childhood, straight out of the pages of John Cheever; the daring and vibrant mother she remembers; and a time that no longer exists for either of them.

This is a story told with the searing honesty and dark humor that can only come from a love tested to its limits.

• A Caregiver’s Story: Eleanor moves her once-vibrant novelist mother from Connecticut to California, only to find herself descending into her own despair as she confronts the daily realities of Alzheimer’s.
• Unflinching Honesty: This is not a sentimental story. Cooney confronts the slow, brutal erosion of her mother's mind—and her own sanity—with raw, searing prose that refuses to look away.
• Dark Humor: Find moments of unexpected, pitch-black comedy in the absurdity and heartbreak of a disease that turns a once-witty woman into a stranger in her own life.
• A Vanished World: As her mother's memories fade, the author brings to life their actual past—a childhood straight out of John Cheever and a daring, brilliant woman who no longer exists.