Where Memories Go: Why dementia changes everything - as heard on BBC R4 Book of the Week

(Paperback)

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'A fine book' The Sunday Times

'Powerful' Guardian

'Wonderful' The Telegraph

'Moving, funny, warm' Mail on Sunday

'Brave, compassionate, tender and honest' Metro

'This book began as an attempt to hold on to my witty, storytelling mother with the one thing I had to hand. Words. Then, as the enormity of the social crisis my family was part of began to dawn, I wrote with the thought that other forgotten lives might be nudged into the light along with hers. Dementia is one of the greatest social, medical, economic, scientific, philosophical and moral challenges of our times. I am a reporter. It became the biggest story of my life.' Sally Magnusson

Sad and funny, wise and honest, Where Memories Go is a deeply intimate account of insidious losses and unexpected joys in the terrible face of dementia, and a call to arms that challenges us all to think differently about how we care for our loved ones when they need us most.

Regarded as one of the finest journalists of her generation, Mamie Baird Magnusson's whole life was a celebration of words - words that she fought to retain in the grip of a disease which is fast becoming the scourge of the 21st century. Married to writer and broadcaster Magnus Magnusson, they had five children of whom Sally is the eldest.

As well as chronicling the anguish, the frustrations and the unexpected laughs and joys that she and her sisters experienced while accompanying their beloved mother on the long dementia road for eight years until her death in 2012, Sally Magnusson seeks understanding from a range of experts and asks penetrating questions about how we treat older people, how we can face one of the greatest social, medical, economic and moral challenges of our times, and what it means to be human.

Facebook.com/WhereMemoriesGo

Reviews

Touching... There are many moments of heartwarming sentiment. Literary snowdrops grow out of the barren earth... This book is the constant, tenuous but vital reconnection between a child and its mother... A fine book. - The Sunday Times

Powerful. - Guardian

This is an extraordinarily moving memoir which is, at the same time, a fascinating exploration of a condition that touches virtually every family. This book will help our understanding. - Alexander McCall Smith

Intensely moving and inspiring, it is as much about living, laughing and family life as it is about loss and death. I read it in one sitting and thought about it again and again.' - Joanna Lumley

'I was in tears on the very first page. - Kirsty Wark

Author Bio

Broadcaster and journalist Sally Magnusson has written 10 books, most famously, her Sunday Times bestseller, Where Memories Go (2014) about her mother's dementia.

Half-Icelandic, half Scottish, Sally has inherited a rich storytelling tradition. Her debut novel, The Sealwoman's Gift, was a Radio 2 Book Club and Zoe Ball Book Club selection, and was shortlisted for several prizes, including the Authors' Club Best First Novel Award, the Saltire Fiction Book of the Year, the Paul Torday Memorial Prize, the McKitterick Prize, the Waverton Good Read Award and the HWA Debut Fiction Crown.

The Ninth Child, her second novel, publishes in spring 2020.