About this item
Five years ago, Andrea Gillies - writer, wife, and mother of three - seeing that her husband's parents were struggling to cope, invited them to move in. She and her newly extended family relocated to a big Victorian house on a remote, windswept peninsula in the far north of Scotland, leaving behind their friends and all that was familiar; hoping to find a new life, and new inspiration for work. Her mother-in-law Nancy was in the middle stages of Alzheimer's Disease, and Keeper charts her journey into dementia, its impact on her personality and her family, and the author's researches into what dementia is. As the grip of her disease tightens, Nancy's grasp on everything we think of as ordinary unravels before our eyes. Diary entries and accounts of conversations with Nancy track the slow unravelling.
About the Author
I was born in York and went to school there, went to St Andrews University,then worked in theatre publicity and as a journalist and editor. Married another freelance, had three children,and lived in Somerset, Orkney, France. Now separated and living in Edinburgh. Spent 2 years looking after my mother-in-law, who has Alzheimer's, and wrote a diary which became a book: KEEPER, which won the Wellcome and the Orwell. THE WHITE LIE, a first novel, was published in February 2012. Currently writing a second novel, a love triangle of sorts. A website, andreagillies. com, will be up and running in summer 2012. Meanwhile, there's a facebook page. You can read newspaper reviews of THE WHITE LIE here:
