The Story of Forgetting
By Stefan Merrill Block
Completed April 20, 2008

Stefan Merrill Block made a strong debut with The Story of Forgetting– a tale of families, memories and how secrets can destroy relationships. Indeed, The Story of Forgetting is really a story of remembering – your family, your memories, your way of life. Central to this book is Alzheimer’s, the disease that not only robs people of their memories but how to live, regressing them from adults to children within years. It’s this pain that buttressed this compelling story.

The story intertwined the tales of Seth Waller – a sensitive, smart 15-year old who was dealing with his mother’s diagnosis of familial early-onset Alzheimer’s – and Abel Haggard – an elderly hermit who roamed his decrepit home, remorseful of a life of secrets that bound Abel to his home and land. Block switched back and forth between Seth and Abel’s stories – plus added in the mythological story of Isidora, a place where people’s memories are blissfully erased – and a scientist’s notes of the genetic history of familial early-onset Alzheimer’s. These chapters moved the story nicely, layering each story to the moment when it all came together.

Seth’s chapters mostly dealt with his “empirical research” into this particular type of Alzheimer’s. A novice scientist, Seth discovered a list of early-onset Alzheimer’s sufferers near his home and visited each one, trying to reconstruct his mother’s secret childhood and hoping to find a relative who can shed some light on his mother’s past. Abel’s chapters retold his life, his love for his brother’s wife, his brother’s suffering from early on-set Alzheimer’s and Abel’s love for his daughter who no longer was a part of his life. These characters were developed masterfully – sometimes you snickered at their actions, sometimes you frowned – but always caring about what happened to them.

Inspired by his grandmother’s battle with Alzheimer’s, Block’s The Story of Forgetting was everything but forgettable. I highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys stories about family relationships. I look forward to reading more books from this promising young author. ( )