When distinguised American novelist Amy Bloom began to notice memory slippage, subtle (and then not so subtle) withdrawal from his usual zestful life, she did nothing, and then there came the MRI and the neurologist’s verdict of early onset Alzheimer’s. “I’d rather die on my feet,” husband Brian says, ”than live on my knees,” and ”In Love: A Memoir of Love and Loss” is Bloom’s candid, spirited memoir of the 2020 trip to Switzerland into the embrace of Dignitas, one only a couple of global organizations that enables people to end their own lives with forethought and dignity. Minutely describing the trip, while ducking back in time to the diagnosis phase and the drawn-out period when Bloom battles to find a solution (none is remotely available in the United States), the memoir is simultaneously heart-breaking, refreshingly informative, and humorous, and the author is a lovely, close-up stylist with firm narrative control. In Love is a pacy read that will leave you in tears but also drenched with joy at the love Amy and Brian had.
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