Scar Tissue [Paperback]

Michael Ignatieff's 1994 novel Scar Tissue is the story of two brothers, one a neurologist and the other a philosophy professor, coming to grips with their aged mother's descent into a wasting neurological disorder (Alzheimers?). Neither philosophy or science are able to make sense of the illness, and the question ultimately becomes how the narrator and his brother are to carry on in the face of the inexplicable. This is a sensitive story, finely told.

Although Michael Ignatieff is primarily known as a writer of intelligent books of accessible political theory, his short novel, "Scar Tissue," published more than a decade ago, is a beautifully observed, emotionally precise account of the fraying of minds, flesh, and relationships. It's one the earliest of several good books about the loss of a parent through Alzheimer's disease -- Ignatieff's novel is comparable to John Bayley's memoir of his wife, Iris Murdoch -- but it's more than that. Ignatieff's fiction-maybe-memoir (it has an intensely autobiographical feel) also presents an unsentimental, even merciless, portrait of the book's narrator and his relations with parents, spouse, and others. Again and again, I was struck, and moved by, the psychological accuracy of the book, and the writer's courage in facing up to not only a lot of the "big questions," but to the cost of one's own self-deceptions.

Scar Tissue got a modicum of attention when it first appeared, but I've long had the sense that it deserves many more readers. In addition to all else, I'd put it on any list of "Best Canadian Novels" of the last 15 years.

Michael Ignatieff's novel is written from the perspective of a son who has a mother with a family with a history of dementia. The title reflects the fact that scan of the brain shows scar tissue, and this is how her condition is first diagnoised. The son, the protagonist, is a philosophy professor who has successfully started a life of his own, complete with a very satisfying career and a family of his own. The novel captures the story of his mother, father, and his brother and their experiences in dealing with the mother's diagnosis of premature senile dementia and the progression of her condition.

This book won the MIND Book of the Year: Allen Lane Award (an annual UK award given to a Fiction/Nonfiction book about mental health) and was short-listed for the Booker Prize. The writing is astounding, and as a result I was unprepared for the author's ability to describe the emotional journey of the protagonist. I found myself haunted by the themes and subject matter in the same way that someone passing by a car wreck can't help but stop to stare.

Ignatieff examines what dementia does to the identity of the sufferer and he references the de Kooning, the famous American painter who developed Alzheimer's disease and yet continued to paint. He also examines what dementia does to his own identity, as he find himself trying to figure out who he is when his own mother no longer recognizes him as her son.

This book is a great achievement and will especially appeal to those readers who are seeking a book about illness and the philosophies related to illness and identity.