Counting Backwards

From the author of Rabbits for Food comes a profound and deeply moving new novel about a middle-aged couple's struggle with the husband's descent into early onset Lewy Body dementia, shot through with Kirshenbaum's signature lacerating humor. "Gutsy, funny, heart-wrenching."-The New York Times Book Review It begins with hallucinations. From their living room window, Leo sees a man on stilts, an acting troupe, a pair of swans paddling on the Manhattan streets below. Then he's unable to perform simple tasks and experiences a host of other erratic disturbances, none of which his doctors can explain. Leo, fifty-three, a research scientist, and Addie, a collage artist, have a loving and happy marriage. They'd planned on many more years of work and travel, dinner with friends, quiet evenings at home with the cat. But as Leo's periods of lucidity become rarer, those dreams fall away. Eventually, Leo is diagnosed with early onset dementia in the form of Lewy body disease. When an uncharacteristic act of violence makes it clear that he cannot live at home, he moves first to an assisted living facility and then to a small apartment with a caretaker, where, over time, he descends into full cognitive decline. For years, all Addie can do is watch him die-too soon, and yet not soon enough. Kirshenbaum captures the pair's final years, months, and days in short scenes that burn with despair, rage, and dark humor, tracking the brutal destruction of the disease as well as the moments of love and beauty that still exist for them.

Binnie Kirshenbaum is the author of the story collection History on a Personal Note and eight novels, including Rabbits for Food, On Mermaid Avenue, Hester Among the Ruins, An Almost Perfect Moment, and The Scenic Route. Her novels have been chosen as Notable Books of the Year by The New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, NPR, TIME, the San Francisco Chronicle, and The Washington Post. Her work has been translated into seven languages.