Wood, Joseph

English

Enlighten: Publications

Somebody I Used to Know 
 
by Wendy Mitchell with Anna Wharton 
 
London, Bloomsbury, 2018 
(ISBN 9781408893364), 320 pp. 
 
Joseph Wood (University of Glasgow) 
 
 
 
You could be forgiven for thinking from the first italicised page of Wendy Mitchell’s memoir Somebody I 
Used to Know that she is addressing a dead partner or relative. Mitchell describes a momentary feeling of 
total blankness, 
 
A  
big  
dark  
black  
hole 
 
and the passage ends ‘And the worse thing was, just when I needed you most, you were gone’ (p.1). Yet as 
these second-person flashbacks continue through the book it becomes clear that, rather than anybody else, 
the you she is writing to is her past self, somebody who was defined by her achievements and active 
lifestyle, somebody she used to know but who is now very distant from her.  
 
Despite this irrevocable rift between old and dementia selves, Mitchell’s book, written in collaboration with 
ghostwriter Anna Wharton, has already become a bestseller and my copy is from the fifth print run since 
its publication at the beginning of February 2018. Its appeal is clear: Mitchell writes to us from the other 
side of dementia, documenting how the disease subtly undermines her agency but also demonstrating her 
own open-minded and frequently optimistic outlook on a disease which is so often just shorthand for 
dreaded old age and senility. Mitchell has young onset Alzheimer’s and her book sets out to prove that 
‘dementia has a beginning and a middle, as well as an end’ (p.140). Alongside flashbacks to her past self, 
it documents her illness from its beginning as unexplained falls while jogging through her dealings with 
clinicians uninterested in her after diagnosis, going on to depict her struggle to continue working and 
subsequent reinvention after early retirement as a successful blogger and an ambassador for better research 
and public understanding of the disease. 
 
The book shares several tropes and set-pieces we might expect from a dementia narrative – the secret trail 
of Post-It reminders, the lost words during a public speech, the breaking of the diagnosis to horrified 
children, the reluctant self-extraction from a high-powered job, the regaining of control over the disease 
through a public advocacy role – and juxtaposes Mitchell’s advancing dementia, which we might 
understand as one of a loss of autonomy, with the hard-won autonomy of a resourceful woman who brought 
up two daughters on her own and progressed from working as a cleaner to become a roster ‘guru’ leading 
a non-clinical team within the NHS (p.81). Like those before it, Mitchell’s narrative contributes to several 
ongoing discussions about how society deals with dementia, such as the way doctors relate to newly 
diagnosed patients, the difficulties of retaining independence, and the problems around assisted dying and 
advanced directives for people whose capacity to make decisions is eroded so gradually. 
 
However, it has something which that other dementia bestseller, Lisa Genova’ Still Alice, does not. While 
Genova’s fictional world gives an uneasy sense that (god, forbid!) even rich white academics get dementia 
and so can be read as a narrative in which the disease is almost recompense for a privileged lifestyle of 
mimosas on Harvard Square, Somebody I Used to Know makes the illness seem like something that can 
affect anyone irrespective of background, and, more importantly, something that can be accommodated in 
many respects through better awareness of how the disease affects people. Partly this is due to Mitchell’s 
less privileged background, and because her book has what Anne Hunsaker Hawkins has called the 
‘experiential authority’ of non-fiction illness autobiography which rivals the medical authority of medical 
professionals (like Genova, who is a neuroscientist) with the first-hand expertise of a patient (Hawkins, 
1999). Yet it is mostly down to Mitchell’s practical way of dealing with her disease and her repeated ability 
to persevere, and indeed to innovate, when times are tough.  
 
Although never prescriptive, Mitchell details her own experience of difficulties presented by dementia 
alongside descriptions of how she has continued to live an independent and fulfilling life with the disease. 
Moreover, although there are moments of lyricism – Mitchell understands her dementia as a temporary fog 
or snowstorm that whites out her thinking and at one point Alzheimer’s is figured as ‘a thief in the night, 
stealing precious pictures from our life as we sleep’ (p.71) – the book’s prose is more often straightforward 
and to the point, rich instead in idiosyncratic details given in the first person by someone who, Mitchell is 
clear, is ‘living with’ rather than ‘suffering’ from a disease (p.173).  
 
She extolls the adaptive benefits of modern technology and social media for someone whose memory or 
speech often let them down and stresses how minute forward planning allows her to travel to attend 
dementia conferences and workshops on her own. Some of Mitchell’s observations are particularly valuable 
since they may be unfamiliar to general readers, such as heightened sensitivity to noise and bright colours, 
inability to deal with rapidly changing environments or to understand that cupboards and doors might have 
anything behind them. She also finds solace in experiences which are broadly thought to be negative: on 
believing she can see her parents again she writes that it is not unethical to go along with such a ‘fantasy’ 
because it is more important that you are ‘valuing the person’s experience’ (p.193). She thus makes the 
important observation that, while the disease disrupts our memory, we are still able to find value and 
pleasure in experiences that take place in the moment. As she tells Julianne Moore, star of the film version 
of Still Alice, ‘I live for the moment […] I just enjoy each day as it comes’ (p.149). 
 
While the book is valuable for presenting Mitchell’s point of view, I would have liked to read a passage 
indicating the role Wharton played in producing the book. As a professional ghostwriter, she is given a 
small byline on the inside title page but not on the front cover and credited in Mitchell’s acknowledgment 
as someone ‘without whom this seed of an idea would never have grown’ (p.299). On her website, Wharton 
offers a range of packages for would-be writers starting with basic marketing and promotion advice to the 
elite Bestseller package where she produces and publishes an entire book based on interviews with the 
‘author’. However, her previous successes appear to have been ones she sought out herself and are all first-
hand accounts by women who have overcome situations of adversity, such as deafblindness, female genital 
mutilation or domestic violence. Elsewhere in interviews and a TedEx talk she sets herself up as someone 
with the skillset to empower women by providing them with the possibility of broadcasting their voice to a 
wider audience.  
 
Presumably Wharton’s role has been downplayed because much of the achievement of the text lies squarely 
with Mitchell and her existing blog; yet a section, however brief, on how and why Wharton approached 
Mitchell would be of interest. Moreover, if both authors were to address the mechanics of writing a memoir 
as, or with, someone whose memory is impaired and explain how far the clarity of the text relies on the 
filter of Wharton’s narrative expertise, it would make the process – which the authors agree elsewhere was 
collaborative – appear as less of a sleight-of-hand than it currently does, and provide a valuable insight for 
readers working on illness narratives or autobiography. 
 
For purposes of science communication, I would also like Mitchell and Wharton to have distinguished more 
clearly between the dementias that Mitchell lives with – Alzheimer’s and vascular dementias, which are 
associated with memory loss and slowness of cognition and movement – and frontotemporal dementia 
which is associated with more pronounced behavioural and personality changes and, as such, might be more 
difficult to map onto the positive sense of a continued identity that Mitchell advocates. 
 
In all, this is a valuable and engaging contribution to mainstream literature on dementia and associated 
illnesses because it succeeds where Wharton has succeeded before, in demonstrating how it is possible to 
find a positive way of dealing with a difficult situation and getting a marginal voice heard by a general 
audience. Without being evangelical, it shows Mitchell repeatedly debunking the silent assumption that 
people with dementia are unable to make choices about their own life and gives an insight into how 
important small adaptations in understanding and technology can be for those who, as Mitchell emphasises, 
are still living with the disease. 
 
 
 
Further Reading 
 
Hawkins, A. H. 1999. Reconstructing Illness: studies in pathography, second edition, (West Lafayette: 
Purdue University Press). 
 


Somebody I Used to Know by Wendy Mitchell with Anna Wharton

Enlighten

Somebody I Used to Know  by Wendy Mitchell with Anna Wharton  London, Bloomsbury, 2018 (ISBN 9781408893364), 320 pp.  Joseph Wood (University of Glasgow)    You could be forgiven for thinking from the first italicised page of Wendy Mitchell’s memoir Somebody I Used to Know that she is addressing a dead partner or relative. Mitchell describes a momentary feeling of total blankness,  A  big  dark  black  hole  and the passage ends ‘And the worse thing was, just when I needed you most, you were gone’ (p.1). Yet as these second-person flashbacks continue through the book it becomes clear that, rather than anybody else, the you she is writing to is her past self, somebody who was defined by her achievements and active lifestyle, somebody she used to know but who is now very distant from her.   Despite this irrevocable rift between old and dementia selves, Mitchell’s book, written in collaboration with ghostwriter Anna Wharton, has already become a bestseller and my copy is from the fifth print run since its publication at the beginning of February 2018. Its appeal is clear: Mitchell writes to us from the other side of dementia, documenting how the disease subtly undermines her agency but also demonstrating her own open-minded and frequently optimistic outlook on a disease which is so often just shorthand for dreaded old age and senility. Mitchell has young onset Alzheimer’s and her book sets out to prove that ‘dementia has a beginning and a middle, as well as an end’ (p.140). Alongside flashbacks to her past self, it documents her illness from its beginning as unexplained falls while jogging through her dealings with clinicians uninterested in her after diagnosis, going on to depict her struggle to continue working and subsequent reinvention after early retirement as a successful blogger and an ambassador for better research and public understanding of the disease.  The book shares several tropes and set-pieces we might expect from a dementia narrative – the secret trail of Post-It reminders, the lost words during a public speech, the breaking of the diagnosis to horrified children, the reluctant self-extraction from a high-powered job, the regaining of control over the disease through a public advocacy role – and juxtaposes Mitchell’s advancing dementia, which we might understand as one of a loss of autonomy, with the hard-won autonomy of a resourceful woman who brought up two daughters on her own and progressed from working as a cleaner to become a roster ‘guru’ leading a non-clinical team within the NHS (p.81). Like those before it, Mitchell’s narrative contributes to several ongoing discussions about how society deals with dementia, such as the way doctors relate to newly diagnosed patients, the difficulties of retaining independence, and the problems around assisted dying and advanced directives for people whose capacity to make decisions is eroded so gradually.  However, it has something which that other dementia bestseller, Lisa Genova’ Still Alice, does not. While Genova’s fictional world gives an uneasy sense that (god, forbid!) even rich white academics get dementia and so can be read as a narrative in which the disease is almost recompense for a privileged lifestyle of mimosas on Harvard Square, Somebody I Used to Know makes the illness seem like something that can affect anyone irrespective of background, and, more importantly, something that can be accommodated in many respects through better awareness of how the disease affects people. Partly this is due to Mitchell’s less privileged background, and because her book has what Anne Hunsaker Hawkins has called the ‘experiential authority’ of non-fiction illness autobiography which rivals the medical authority of medical professionals (like Genova, who is a neuroscientist) with the first-hand expertise of a patient (Hawkins, 1999). Yet it is mostly down to Mitchell’s practical way of dealing with her disease and her repeated ability to persevere, and indeed to innovate, when times are tough.   Although never prescriptive, Mitchell details her own experience of difficulties presented by dementia alongside descriptions of how she has continued to live an independent and fulfilling life with the disease. Moreover, although there are moments of lyricism – Mitchell understands her dementia as a temporary fog or snowstorm that whites out her thinking and at one point Alzheimer’s is figured as ‘a thief in the night, stealing precious pictures from our life as we sleep’ (p.71) – the book’s prose is more often straightforward and to the point, rich instead in idiosyncratic details given in the first person by someone who, Mitchell is clear, is ‘living with’ rather than ‘suffering’ from a disease (p.173).   She extolls the adaptive benefits of modern technology and social media for someone whose memory or speech often let them down and stresses how minute forward planning allows her to travel to attend dementia conferences and workshops on her own. Some of Mitchell’s observations are particularly valuable since they may be unfamiliar to general readers, such as heightened sensitivity to noise and bright colours, inability to deal with rapidly changing environments or to understand that cupboards and doors might have anything behind them. She also finds solace in experiences which are broadly thought to be negative: on believing she can see her parents again she writes that it is not unethical to go along with such a ‘fantasy’ because it is more important that you are ‘valuing the person’s experience’ (p.193). She thus makes the important observation that, while the disease disrupts our memory, we are still able to find value and pleasure in experiences that take place in the moment. As she tells Julianne Moore, star of the film version of Still Alice, ‘I live for the moment […] I just enjoy each day as it comes’ (p.149).  While the book is valuable for presenting Mitchell’s point of view, I would have liked to read a passage indicating the role Wharton played in producing the book. As a professional ghostwriter, she is given a small byline on the inside title page but not on the front cover and credited in Mitchell’s acknowledgment as someone ‘without whom this seed of an idea would never have grown’ (p.299). On her website, Wharton offers a range of packages for would-be writers starting with basic marketing and promotion advice to the elite Bestseller package where she produces and publishes an entire book based on interviews with the ‘author’. However, her previous successes appear to have been ones she sought out herself and are all first-hand accounts by women who have overcome situations of adversity, such as deafblindness, female genital mutilation or domestic violence. Elsewhere in interviews and a TedEx talk she sets herself up as someone with the skillset to empower women by providing them with the possibility of broadcasting their voice to a wider audience.   Presumably Wharton’s role has been downplayed because much of the achievement of the text lies squarely with Mitchell and her existing blog; yet a section, however brief, on how and why Wharton approached Mitchell would be of interest. Moreover, if both authors were to address the mechanics of writing a memoir as, or with, someone whose memory is impaired and explain how far the clarity of the text relies on the filter of Wharton’s narrative expertise, it would make the process – which the authors agree elsewhere was collaborative – appear as less of a sleight-of-hand than it currently does, and provide a valuable insight for readers working on illness narratives or autobiography.  For purposes of science communication, I would also like Mitchell and Wharton to have distinguished more clearly between the dementias that Mitchell lives with – Alzheimer’s and vascular dementias, which are associated with memory loss and slowness of cognition and movement – and frontotemporal dementia which is associated with more pronounced behavioural and personality changes and, as such, might be more difficult to map onto the positive sense of a continued identity that Mitchell advocates.  In all, this is a valuable and engaging contribution to mainstream literature on dementia and associated illnesses because it succeeds where Wharton has succeeded before, in demonstrating how it is possible to find a positive way of dealing with a difficult situation and getting a marginal voice heard by a general audience. Without being evangelical, it shows Mitchell repeatedly debunking the silent assumption that people with dementia are unable to make choices about their own life and gives an insight into how important small adaptations in understanding and technology can be for those who, as Mitchell emphasises, are still living with the disease.    Further Reading  Hawkins, A. H. 1999. Reconstructing Illness: studies in pathography, second edition, (West Lafayette: Purdue University Press).  

http://eprints.gla.ac.uk/181424/1/181424.pdf

Somebody I Used to Know by Wendy Mitchell with Anna Wharton

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