Daddyboy: A Memoir (Graywolf Memoir Series) - Hardcover

Konek, Carol Wolfe

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1555971539 ISBN 13: 9781555971533

Publisher: Graywolf Pr, 1991

Synopsis

The author recounts her family's struggle to cope with her father's decline as Alzheimer's disease changes him from a strong ambitious man to a bewildered child

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Reviews

This vivid and moving reminiscence by an associate dean at Wichita State University about her father's deterioration and death from Alzheimer's disease in the early and mid-1980s is marked by the author's subtle psychological insight. Leonard Wolfe was a scientist, a rationalist, a socialist, an atheist and very much an intellectual, making his progressive mental degeneration from Alzheimer's all the harder to bear, for him and his family. His wife, a feisty, vibrant woman, was worn down by the burdens of being chief care giver; the grown children too were much affected, for Alzheimer's is, in Konek's words, "a family disease." The author is especially perceptive about her mother's attitudes, ridden by guilt that she was not doing enough for her husband and unsure of the best care for him. An impressive work.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A daughter's moving recollections of her father, a ``model of dedication to the life of the mind,'' who ``day by day, cell by cell, loses his mind.'' Konek alternates her account of her father's slow death from Alzheimer's disease with vivid, sometimes painful, memories of her childhood in a home where a strict father, who ``controlled every aspect of his being and of ours,'' held her to singularly high standards of performance. She adored him and sought his love and approval--but she also hated and feared him. As he slowly disintegrates mentally and physically, though, she comes to understand and accept him. Although Konek's father is the focus and the immediate victim, the author's concern here is not simply the calamitous effect of Alzheimer's on him, but rather the havoc it wreaks on the whole family. Alzheimer's is truly a family disease, isolating care-givers, inflicting guilt, turning order into chaos. It traps Konek's mother for years ``with a dead man in a live body,'' leaving her vulnerable to con artists who take all her money, even her house. Occasional memory lapses take on ominous significance for Konek, who begins to imagine signs of the disease in herself. Finally, the family struggles with the most difficult question facing families when one member's approaching death is slow and painful but inevitable: Are we obligated to maintain life, or to allow death? Alzheimer's affects millions of men and women and their families. Konek's book will not bring them cheer, but it offers the significant comfort of a shared experience thoughtfully considered and beautifully described. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

This is a combination father's biography and daughter's autobiography. The daughter is writing about her relationship with her father, his diagnosis with Alzheimer's, and how she dealt with their interaction till his death. The text is filled with the daughter's anger at her father through all the stages of her life and especially at his disease. The focus is mainly on her, secondarily on her father, and lastly on her mother, sister, and brother. Jean Tyler and Harry Anifantakis's The Diminished Mind ( LJ 2/1/91) is a much better account of a family's life after an Alzheimer's diagnosis: how they learned to deal with the disease's effects, and the lack of support for the caregivers or family. Not recommended.
- Betsy Kraus, New Mexico Inst. of Mining & Technology Lib., Socorro
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Graywolf Pr
• Publication date: 1991
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1555971539
• ISBN 13: 9781555971533
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 161