Thursday, December 29, 2011

Presence, by Maureen McHugh

Presence is another story in Maureen McHugh's Mothers and Other Monsters collection, and I liked this one quite a bit.  It's a very close and informed view of what it is like to deal with someone with Alzheimer's disease.  The growth in this condition would be considered far more tragic if several other impending tragedies like global warming and such were not drowning it out.  In this story it is possible to cure the disease, but at great monetary and personal cost--the recovered person is not really in any particular sense the same one.  This happens in other conditions  as well--see Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance for how this transpires in personality disorders.  Our identity is indeed fragile.  3 stars.
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