Iris and the friends - John Bayley

After more than three years suffering from Alzheimer's disease, the novelist and philosopher Iris Murdoch died in January 1999. Earlier that month she was taken to a home for the terminally ill, and she remained radiant and calm for the last weeks of her life. The last year or so of Iris Murdoch's life provides the framework for this book, but within this structure, John Bayley returns repeatedly to memories of his own earlier life, and of more than 40 years of marriage to Iris. Alzheimer's is a lonely predicament for the carer, and Bayley describes how he coped with the ordeal of watching his wife become terminally ill by forming a growing dependency on memory as a stand-by, consolation and friend.;In the final chapters, Bayley describes his wife's death which was an entirely serene one. He writes of how he is learning to cope with the loss of Iris, and how he is creating a new life for himself. Partly an autobiography, partly the biography of a marriage, the book provides a sensitive and, at times, gently humourous lesson in the uses of adversity.