Dementia: A Novella by Hans Peter Braendlin
Dementia: A Novellaby Hans Peter BraendlinThey found Nurse on the pavement early this morning — neck broken, head smashed in, directly beneath Gloria's window four storeys up. And you were in Gloria's room last night. You remember. The window was open.Hans Peter Braendlin's novella unfolds entirely inside the mind of an elderly man in a care home, in a second-person voice that slips between accusation, memory and self-justification. The nurse who took away the pipe tobacco and locked up the Glenlivet. The watch Marlene gave him, which he is certain she stole. The wheelchair he may not actually need.Detectives are in the building. Gloria has been taken down to what the residents call the tombs — the basement rooms with barred windows and doors locked from the outside. And the reader is left to assemble, from a narrator whose memory cannot be trusted, what happened and who is to blame.A short, unsettling book about how easily a life is dismissed once its owner is thought to be losing it.eBook (EPUB) · ISBN 9781622490622