Four Umbrellas: A Couple's Journey Into Young-Onset Alzheimer's

by June Hutton, Tony Wanless

Overview

A writing couple searches for answers when Alzheimer's causes one of them to lose the place where stories come from — memory.

At the age of fifty-three, Tony walks away from a life of journalism and into an unknown future. June is forty-eight, a writer and teacher, and over the following decade watches as her husband changes — in interests, goals, and behaviour — until Tony has a fall, ending the life they had known.

A diagnosis is seven years away, yet the signs of Alzheimer’s are all around. A suitcase Tony packs for a trip is jammed with four umbrellas, a visual symbol of cognitive looping. But how far back do these signs go? The couple starts probing the past and finding answers. This is not an old person’s disease.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781459747791
Publisher:	Dundurn Press
Publication date:	11/10/2020
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

June Hutton has written two novels and facilitates writing workshops at a treatment centre for addiction. Tony Wanless worked for a variety of newspapers across Canada, including the Financial Post and the Province, and is taking part in a study on Alzheimer's at UBC Hospital. They live in Vancouver.

Editorial Reviews

10/19/2020

Novelist Hutton (Underground) and her journalist husband, Wanless, chronicle in this poignant and devastating memoir the crushing toll Wanless’s early-onset Alzheimer’s diagnosis had on their lives. After Wanless left his job as a newspaper reporter to work as a freelancer at age 52, Hutton noticed something was wrong with Wanless after he started to do things like leave stove-top burners on for hours unattended, put out his cigars in plants, and start small fires. Then, after a fall and a trip to the emergency room, he became increasingly forgetful. A harrowing seven-year odyssey followed, filled with medical exams and memory tests that ultimately confirmed early-stage Alzheimer’s disease. From here, the decline is quick and steep as Wanless experiences more symptoms to the point where he had trouble with “basic functions like word recall, mathematics and even handwriting.” The memoir skillfully weaves reflective emails from Wanless to Hutton into the narrative, allowing readers to witness step by painful step, the impact of the “long, slow fade” the disease imparts. Readers will find this insightful look into existence with this life-altering disease both educational and inspiring. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

Standing as a stark illustration of the culture in which dementia and caregiving exist in Canada, Four Umbrellas: A Couple’s Journey Into Young-Onset Alzheimer’s is a book with insight for all of us

Minola Review

Four Umbrellas is a moving and intimate memoir that rattled in my head with its simple beauty. Brimming with courageous, tender, and insightful reflections, the reader cannot help but be accidentally inspired.

author of Barnacle Love Anthony De Sa

June Hutton and Tony Wanless have written a rare gem of a memoir: a candid and clear-eyed insiders’ account of a couple’s journey into Alzheimer’s. With first-person narratives from both caregiver and patient, this is a journey of discovery valiantly shared. A must-read.

author of Dragon Springs Road Janie Chang

Heartbreaking, riveting, and thoroughly educational ... Four Umbrellas is a story about trauma, love, loss, redemption, reaching out, coming out, and bringing visibility to a topic that is fraught with social stigma.

Ormsby Review

A groundbreaking book in both format and content, offering the reader a unique window into the couple's fearful, but also courageous, journey with Alzheimer's.

Senior Line

2020-08-28
A married Vancouver couple share their heartbreaking ordeal with Alzheimer’s disease.

After Wanless, who had suffered from depression for most of his life, left his journalism career in 2002 to work as a freelancer, Hutton, a novelist and teacher, began to notice fissures in her husband’s mental foundation. After filling in the details of their lives together as writers struggling through the recession of 2008, the authors move to 2011, when Wanless, in his 50s, was becoming increasingly forgetful, confused, and irritable after suffering a minor fall at home. Hutton suspected that he’d suffered a stroke, but scans and diagnostic tests showed only mild cognitive impairment. His condition deteriorated further as the years progressed, and Hutton discovered months of unpaid bills, appliances left on, and general disorientation. This situation caused a shift in her role to both wife and caregiver, an increasingly stressful pairing that coincided with her father’s declining health (her mother died in 2006). Though predominantly written by Hutton, this is very much a joint debut memoir; Wanless offers a fresh perspective in the form of reprinted emails to his wife. They diligently piece together fragmented impressions about suffering with debilitating memory loss, depression, and the “long, slow fade” that Wanless believes began when he left the newsroom behind. Finally, in early 2018, after years spent yearning for a definitive diagnosis from gerontology scans, a battery of neurological memory tests confirmed early-stage Alzheimer’s disease. Throughout the text, Hutton is candid, openly admitting that a memoir isn’t the kind of book she’d envisioned herself writing. Earlier in her career, she published two novels, and she now teaches writing at an addiction recovery center. The authors present a harrowing, moving seven-year odyssey, rendered in heart-wrenchingly sad yet compassionate and loving detail. Near the end, Hutton offers informative personal thoughts on dealing with dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, which should be useful for readers encountering similar obstacles.

Intimate, poignant perspectives on a cruel malady of the mind.

Kirkus Reviews