The Forgotten One

With great finesse, humor and sensitivity, Cyril Massarotto brings us to the edges of the mind, memory and familial love.

A few months ago, Madeleine started forgetting things. Oh, you know, little things. Nothing to worry about. But then one day she forgot where she had parked her car. In a panic, she tried to call her husband, Max, but could not seem to find his number anywhere in her address book. And come to think of it, is Max actually his name? Her son Thomas confirms that her husband’s name is Max, but that he passed away several months earlier.
The diagnosis is in: Madeleine has Alzheimer’s.

A mixture of tender and bitter, The Forgotten One has two narrators: Thomas and Madeleine, both dealing with Alzheimer’s in their own way. Thomas is the first of Madeleine’s children whose name she forgets: the forgotten one. Yet Thomas, a writer who has lost his inspiration, is her primary caregiver and spends all of his time with her, to the point of exhaustion. Madeline, on the other hand, lives through the progressive and implacably dehumanizing experience of her illness.