Structure

The work is Amy Bloom’s memoir of her late husband Brian’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis and his subsequent determination to end his life through assisted suicide rather than wait for the disease to progress. The memoir’s structure is simple and serves the narrative purpose of allowing readers to experience Bloom’s complex feelings of guilt, grief, and relief as she helps her husband find an organization willing to help him. The memoir explores a part of life that society so often shies away from discussing.

The nonfiction work does always divide into clear boundaries between the past with threads and clues woven throughout each section to tie together Amy and Brian’s past, present, and uncertain future. The work is interesting in its structure because the future always seems to stop after Brian’s death. Amy does not allow herself to make many plans beyond...