Summary:

Dr. Jennifer White, age 64, is read her rights in a Chicago police station. But how much does the retired orthopedist who specializes in hand surgery really understand? Dr. White has Alzheimer's dementia. Her score of 19 on a mini-mental state examination (MMSE) is consistent with a moderate degree of cognitive impairment. She is questioned about the death of a neighbor, 75-year-old Amanda O'Toole, who lives 3 houses away. Amanda happens to be Dr. White's best friend and the godmother of her daughter. Amanda died at home, the result of head trauma. Four fingers of her right hand were cleanly and expertly chopped off. It seems that Dr. White is genuinely incapable of recalling whether she committed a murder or not. The physician is not charged with the crime but remains a suspect.

Dr. White's memory and mind are no longer reliable. In her lucid moments, she jots down notes in a journal. She dubs the notebook her "Bible of consciousness" [5] and it assists her in filling in the blanks of her past life. Her husband James has died. She has approximately $2.5 million of financial assets. Her two adult children - Mark and Fiona - squabble.  Throughout the course of her disease, family secrets are revealed and intimate details are exposed. Relationships fray.

Despite a slew of prescription medications (galantamine, an antipsychotic, an antidepressant, and a benzodiazepine as needed), Dr. White's mental status and behavior deteriorate. Her confusion, wandering, forgetfulness, and episodes of agitation worsen. The story is structured in four sections, based on the residence of the protagonist: First is Dr. White's time in her own home aided by a live-in caregiver, Magdalena. Next is her stay in an assisted living facility. Then she briefly escapes from that place and has a 36 hour adventure of sorts. Finally, Dr. White is incarcerated in a state mental health facility.

Ultimately, the circumstances of Amanda's death are made known. And while Dr. White did not kill her best friend, the surgeon was present at the scene with a scalpel in her hand. Another character was there too.

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Summary:

Large blue circular eyes stare up from this frontal self-portrait. The sclera is visible underneath the eyes, which reflect the same washed blue of the background. This blue is as startling as, and reminiscent of, the green background of a Van Gogh self-portrait. The visage is grimly determined and the mouth a thin-lipped line. Ears are large and the shoulders blend into the background. He is thin and somewhat haggard.

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Summary:

This is an aerial view of a comatose patient being force-fed by a funnel leading directly into her stomach. Surrounding the consultation table are six (identifiable) black-robed supreme judges gleefully pouring nutritious foods (grapes, fish, Quaker Oats, peanut butter, water and 7-Up) into her. Two tiny symbols, the scales of justice and a red-white-and-blue eagle contribute to the otherwise empty courtroom decor.

In the upper right corner, barely visible, is an open door with a "Keep Out" sign dangling from its knob, through which a doctor and nurse peer in. Four tiny red paper-doll figures holding hands, symbolizing the family, are also by this door. Hanging precariously over the patient and consultation table is an ugly, large, bare 25-watt light bulb.

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Summary:

The writer Donald Hall gives us a lyrical armchair view through the windows of his house not only of the New Hampshire landscape, but also of his and his anscestors lives lived in that landscape. His honest and moving account from his 83rd year  is captured in the following: "I feel the circles grow smaller, and old age is a ceremony of losses, which is on the whole preferable to dying at forty-seven or fifty-two [the ages his wife Jane Kenyon died and his father died]. When I lament and darken over my diminishments, I accomplish nothing. It's better to sit at the window all day, pleased to watch the birds, barns, and flowers. It is a pleasure to write about what I do" (p.41).

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Summary:

This portrait of the artist's mother was done a few months before her death in 1954. An elderly woman with white, feathery, unkempt hair sits facing the viewer, wearing a plaid wool bath robe. Although the chair is set on a slight diagonal with the picture plane, the impression is one of frontality: the subject faces (confronts) the viewer with a combination of fortitude and vulnerability.

Neel has suggested spiritual and emotional conflict by dividing the face and accentuating the frightened eyes behind large spectacles. The strong geometrical pattern of the bathrobe gives a sense of stability to the form, while simultaneously setting up a contrast with the delicate hands and aged face of the sick woman.

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Summary:

In 1980, four years before her death at age 84, Alice Neel painted her first self-portrait. Grasping her paintbrush, the naked artist looks directly at the viewer without concern for pleasing. Bravely, she invites us to meet her fully in this deeply honest and vulnerable space.

The hard vertical bars of the chair encircle her soft and abundant flesh. One arm is raised in readiness for work, the other hangs limp, mimicking the heavy droop of her breasts and stomach. Eyeglasses hint at frailty yet proclaim her as one who sees. These opposing elements mark her singularity.

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Summary:

'Smut: Two Unseemly Stories' consists of two novellas, 'The Greening of Mrs Donaldson' and 'The Shielding of Mrs Forbes'.   Both are slight but well-observed and nimbly narrated stories about sex and manners.   

In 'The Greening of Mrs Donaldson', a newly widowed woman has to make ends meet; she takes in lodgers (initially a medical student and her boyfriend) and finds herself employed at a local medical school as a standardized or simulated patient (a patient instructor), joining several other stalwart characters in feigning illnesses and ailments for the educational benefit of training doctors.  When her tenants do not have the money to pay their rent, they find another way of reimbursing Mrs Donaldson.  'The Shielding of Mrs Forbes' is about the marriage of vain handsome Graham Forbes to a wealthy, although not particularly beautiful, woman, much to the frustrated dismay of his mother.  In both novellas, secrets about sex and surprising erotic arrangments threaten the measured, middle class lives of the Donaldson and Forbes families.  

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Summary:

Mija, a 66 year-old woman, is raising her daughter's grumpy teenaged son and trying to make ends meet with a part-time job as a maid for an elderly, wealthy man who has suffered a stroke.

She finds herself searching for nouns, and after consulting a doctor, is told bluntly that she has early Alzheimer's disease.

Perhaps because of her preoccupation with language, she joins a poetry class and strives to write, listening carefully to the poet-instructor's philosophical advice on vision and creativity. Throughout the film, she carries a little notebook with her and pauses to write her thoughts about flowers, beauty, birds, and apples.

A young girl in the grandson's class has committed suicide by drowning and Mija witnesses the mother's grief. From the girl's diary, the teachers and family learn that she had been repeatedly raped by six boys, one of whom is Mija's grandson.

The fathers of the other boys try to make a monetary settlement with the bereaved mother; they urge Mija too find an extraordinay amount money. In despair, she extorts the money from her employer as a "favour"-but the boy is utterly indifferent to her action, and in the end, is taken by the police anyway. Mija summons her daughter. She leaves a bouquet of flowers and the one poem that she managed to compose for her instructor to find at the last class. The daughter arrives to an empty home and we assume Mija has drowned herself.

 

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Summary:

Aminata Diallo, called Meena, is born in mid-eighteenth-century Africa and leads a happy life with her Muslim parents. Her mother is a midwife and is teaching Meena her skills. But ruthless white men appear, killing her parents and imprisoning her. The eleven year-old girl is forced to march miles and miles to the sea. During the journey she makes friends with Chekura, a slightly older boy who seems to be employed by the white captors, but like Meena, has also been captured. They are kept at a fort, then herded on to ships and taken on an agonizing journey across the ocean.

Meena and Chekura are sold as slaves. They lose sight of each other and live on plantations in privation and squalor never knowing if they will be treated with kindness or cruelty. Meena is raped by an owner. She learns how to read and write English quickly (although her skill must be kept secret), and she is fascinated by maps, constantly plotting to return to Africa.

Meena and Chekura find each other and marry secretly - but soon they are separated. She has a baby girl. Her literary and midwifery skills are her salvation, and eventually she is sold to a Jewish duty inspector. He and his wife treat her well, and she and her child live in comfort, but the revolutionary war disrupts their world. Meena returns home one day to find that the Jewish couple have fled on ship to England, taking her daughter with them..."for her own good."

Meena moves to New York City, taking a room in a hotel and still intent on finding a way back to Africa. She writes the names and ages of the people clamoring to go to Nova Scotia as a reward for serving the British in the Revolutionary War: the original "book of negroes." The settlers arrive with hope and optimism, but they encounter more oppressions. Later she is lured by the attractive plan to build "Freetown" in Sierra Leone; again however, the promised resources never materialize and the fledgling community degenerates into crime and misery. Even Meena's attempt to find her original home is thwarted.

In 1802 London, as a frail elderly woman, the abolitionists treat Meena with reverence and curiosity. They encourage her to write her story, and there she finds her daughter again.

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Summary:

Zol Szabo, is public health doctor for the Hamilton Ontario region. He is also a single parent to nine year-old, Max, because his wife could not deal with Max’s mild physical disability. He is dating Colleen an attractive woman detective whom he met in the previous novel. The story opens with Zol’s angst over his son’s expensive misuse of a cell phone that he’d been given for safety reasons.

Soon he and his team are investigating cases of diarrhea in a seniors’ residence.  The diagnosis is difficult—but the doctors are confident they know what it is; however, the recommended treatments prove ineffective. Gradually they begin to suspect that the drugs are not working because they might be fake. Even worse, they notice that the people infected are all taking the same arthritis medicine—could that drug be the source of the infection?

In the background an unbending hospital administration and a hostile boss make the situation even worse.

A team of elderly friends who reside in the senior’s home collaborate to help solve the mystery. And of course the son’s cell phone is crucial to the dramatic conclusion.

 

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