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Summary: This woman is a hero
Review: A House on Beartown Road made me laugh and cry all at the same time. It is one of the most poignant books I've ever read. Cohen is a hero on two fronts: as a single mother, and a caregiver for her father who suffers from Alzheimer's.It's easy for the reader to see a bit of themselves in Cohen's daily struggles to keep her life and her family's in order. But there are also many moment of joy, whether it's seeing your daughter experience something for the first time or helping her father remember. A House on Beartown Road is a book I won't soon forget.
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Summary: amazing
Review: Elizabeth Cohen has written a beautiful and honest memoir, capturing the essence of courage. The book is really a tribute to strength, survival, and love - I highly reccomend it.
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Summary: You can count on family
Review: Elizabeth's story is a tribute to anyone who is a member of a family. My own family has not nearly the stress that this unique family threesome confronts together. The ability to find a way to appreciate each other no matter where we are in lifes journey is chronicled with grace and beauty. Thumbs up to Elizabeth Cohen for reminding us that no matter what we accomplish or what stage of life we are in, our family is our beginning and final source of hope.
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Summary: A Must Read for Every Member of the Sandwich Generation
Review: Every day in my work as a Long-Term Care Insurance Specialist I work with families as they try and develop a Strategy to deal with the the potential for a love one or themsleves needing long term care. In most cases until something happens to one's own family most people are in deniel. "It will happen to someone else but never to me or our family." I always try to paint a picture for potential clients by using my own families experiences with needing care to make the issues more real. From now on I will just give them a copy of the book. It will do a much better job. I read the "House On Beartown Road" in one sitting on a rainy Sunday with tears in my eyes as I finally understood how lucky my own family was to have had my mom as a fulltime caregiver to both sets of grandparents as well as my father over a period of years. People like Elizabeth Cohen and my mom are great examples of loving family members that did what needed to be done with grace, dignity and a sense of humor. I didn't understand or fully appreciate the concept of being a caregiver while running around in my on life and watching my mom from a distance but after reading the book I sure did! I strongly suggest that every adult with aging parents read the book today as tomorrow may be to late. It will make you think in many different ways. For some reason I really think the author wrote the book to help the rest of us to be better prepared to deal with this growing national crisis of aging parents. Thanks to Ms. Cohen. Th
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Summary: Excellent read! You won't want it to end.
Review: Few books have brought me to tears. This one did. The author writes in a matter-of-fact way about the heart-wrenching disease of Alheimer's, its impact to her life, and the lives of those around her. I didn't want the book to end. It is a quick read. Great book.
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Summary: Hope in the form of a memory.......
Review: How do you comfort a friend whose parent is slipping away to Alzheimer's Disease? Can you truly know how one feels when your friend tells you her mom forgets her birthday, her name, her parent-child relationship? That's what I was looking for when I bought this book as a gift for my friend. Maybe it would give my friend a glint of hope and humor with all she is going through. I couldn't give it to her without reviewing its potential for gloom and sadness so I began reading it and couldn't put it down.
Elizabeth Cohen had a way of connecting to me with all the "mind chatter" about her daily living.... mind chatter that we all have....... the worry about our parents, our spouses, our children. I feel I have found a friend in Elizabeth from her writing. I have been given the "Beartown Road" view of coping with a parent who is slipping away. Elizabeth has shown through her writing that with one memory, one tiny memory, there is hope and love.
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Summary: SUCH FINE WRITING
Review: I found "The House on Beartown Road" shelved in our local library (Pound Ridge, NY) under Mental Health/Alzheimer's. I don't know who decides these things, but this wonderful memoir ought to be prominently placed along with other contemporary memoirs. Elizabeth Cohen is a fine writer and she deserves recognition for this generous tribute to her 80-year-old father, Sandy, to her daughter -- one year old Ava, and to new-found neighbors on Beartown Road and to friends in the Binghamton, NY, community. Sandy and Ava of these are at opposite ends of the verbal spectrum, one forgetting language and the other learning. Elizabeth Cohen herself is there in the middle, somehow trying to work full time as a reporter, managing day care for the two people who depend on her, figuring out how to survive the winter in one of the nation's true snow-belts, and keeping her own sanity as a harrassed single mother.My own mother is 97 with Alzheimer's and I have a one-year old granddaughter, so this book is close to the bone in many ways. I tell everybody about it. I use it in the memoir course I teach. I want to keep it to survive as a classic memoir and as a year-long account by an un-self-pitying caregiver. Elinore Standard Pound Ridge, NY
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Summary: A Tale of Two Lives
Review: I really thought the way the contrast presented, between learning and forgetting, was a very unique perspective for the situation the author found herself in. She could see first hand the wonder of her beloved young baby learning new things everyday, while at the same time, witness the deterioration of another loved one's memory as it slowly ebbed away. Reading this book was special to me in other ways as well. Like the setting for where the story takes place, Beartown Road, is only a few miles from where I live in upstate New York. Reading of familiar names of places described within its pages was a new experience for me. To sum up my review, I recommend this book to anyone looking for a well written, true story, of a person having to watch their loved one succumb to Alzheimer's Disease.
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Summary: Excellent book
Review: I wasn't sure I would like this book since the situation wasn't one I could relate to. Boy was I wrong. I couldn't put the book down and am still wondering what happened next. I am so thankful that the author shared such a personal time in her family's life. I loved the messages of the importance of being there for the people you love and the value of each individual even those who are very ill. The strength that the author found within herself was very inspiring.
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Summary: A Must Read
Review: I work with the elderly and after reading the excerpt from this book in Reader's Digest, while at work no less, I had to have it. I got it this morning and have read a good third of it already. Even if you know nothing about the elderly or Alzheimers, this is a book you won't be able to put down. I am glad I purchased it.
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