Book Review: Gertrude's Cupboard: Recapturing Minds Stolen by Disease

Reviewed By: Cheryl - RAM

Gertrude's Cupboard: Recapturing Minds Stolen by Disease     Amazon US PB Amazon Canada PB
E. J. Cockey
Class/Genre:

The author describes this as a true story, with some details changed to protect the identities of some people and institutions. However, it is not a memoire or biography in any traditional sense of those terms. It is a loose collection of vignettes of the author/narrator's family traumas and her work as an art therapist with severely disabled and dying adults.

Because of the structure of the book. none of the stories have great depth or detail, not even the narrator's story or the tale of Gertrude of the title. This is oddly effective. The effect is of a reflection of real life, in which we only see little snippets of other peoples' lives, while our own life plays out in the background. In this book, the snippets the author sees are the last parts of lives, the bits where, for some people, death comes long after they lose the ability to remember who they are and what their situation is. To the author's credit, she doesn't take the easy way out and dismiss such people as negligible. On the contrary, she gains strength and faith from them when one of her own tiny family is threatened.

It is hard to classify this book in a way which might help potential readers to decide if they would enjoy it. Perhaps the best way to describe 'Gertrude's Cupboard' is as a series of reflections on aging, disability, faith, and the importance of family in a society in which families are fractured and disability is often ignored.

Cheryl - RAM

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Cheryl - RAM