The gingerbread house - Kate Beaufoy

Recently-redundant Tess is keen to start work on a novel and needs to make it work. She and her freelance journalist husband Donn desperately need the money and three weeks looking after Donn's aged mother while the carer takes a break seems like an opportunity to get started. She knows it'll be tough looking after Eleanor, who is suffering from increasingly severe dementia, but she'll surely find some time for herself, won't she?Arriving at the isolated country house their daughter Katia has named The Gingerbread House, a tearful Tess begins to realise that she has a far more difficult few weeks ahead than expected. Her mother-in-law is now in need of constant attention and Donn can't help as he has to stay in town for work.Narrated by Katia - their only child - who prefers not to speak but observes everything, The Gingerbread House is a deeply moving and compassionate story of a family and its tensions and struggles with her grandmother's dementia, as the reclusive teenager describes the effect it has on everyone in a strangely detached but compassionate way. But as the situation regarding her grandmother's care unfolds, a family tragedy even closer to home reveals itself.The Gingerbread House is a beautiful, sensitive portrait of a family dealing with dementia, which will particularly resonate with anyone who has seen the effects of this cruel disease.