In Love: A Memoir of Love and Loss

When Amy Bloom's husband, a vigorous ex-jock architect in his mid-60s, learned he had Alzheimer's, he knew immediately he wanted to end his life well before full dementia could have its own way. Doing so legally, as he and Bloom learned, remains nearly impossible in America in his situation, but In Love is the story of how they were able to, a how-to as well as an elegy written with the wit, honesty, and character insight readers will know from Bloom's brilliant fiction. Bloom writes like a messier (she would say more Jewish) Ann Patchett, with a voice that brings her full humor and worldly competence to bear on a dilemma that confounds (but ultimately affirms) both qualities. It's a beautiful and necessary little book.