The narrative follows the gradual emergence of symptoms: brain fog, anxiety, mood swings, memory lapses. At first, Fiona and those around her (including Fiona herself) attribute many of these to menopause, stress, or depression.
There is also a strong concern with her family history: Alzheimer’s has affected her mother, father, paternal grandparents and an uncle. This background gives extra emotional weight.
What works especially well
Honesty & emotional rawness
The power of this memoir lies very much in Fiona Phillips’s openness about how disorienting Alzheimer’s can be. She doesn’t shy away from the shame, fear, frustration — not just at the disease’s advance but at its early signs and how those are misunderstood. This feels genuine and helps the book avoid sentimentality.
Dual perspective
Having contributions from her husband Martin helps the reader see what it’s like from the partner/carer’s side. That perspective adds depth: the bewilderment, the guilt, the responsibility, the grief of “losing someone while they’re still alive.” It underlines that Alzheimer’s isn’t just a disease of the person diagnosed but has wide ripples.
Structure that mirrors decline
The way the book traces early years with clarity, then shows the creeping effects of Alzheimer’s — the early memory loss, the difficulty in naming things, losing recent memories while older ones remain — gives readers a sense of what the progression feels like from inside. That gives the book its emotional force.
Raising awareness & destigmatising
Fiona Phillips clearly intends this as more than a personal memoir. She wants to use her story to help others recognise early symptoms, reduce shame, and draw attention to how limited the support system is. That purpose comes through.
Difficult truths & where the book challenges the reader
The narrative is painful in places — not just the eventual decline, but the moments of misunderstanding, of misattributed symptoms, of miscommunication in her own marriage and family life. This is not a light read. It forces one to confront how society handles dementia, especially in younger people, and how ill-prepared institutions are for early onset cases.
There's an ambiguity in the end: as Fiona’s illness progresses, her husband’s voice becomes more prominent in telling the story. It’s inevitable in this context, but it raises hard questions about identity and authorship: how much of “her” story is now mediated by others. Some readers might find that transition unsettling, but understandable under the circumstances.
The lack of a neat “hopeful” resolution. Alzheimer’s has no cure; the book doesn’t pretend otherwise. The reality is ongoing decline, loss, uncertainty. But the memoir’s strength is in its refusal to gloss over that.
Remember When is an important and courageous book. It’s not just for those who know someone with Alzheimer’s — though it’ll certainly help them — but for all of us, because it highlights what is often overlooked: that Alzheimer’s isn’t only an illness of old age, or something that only happens “to someone else.”
Fiona Phillips’s story reminds us how easily warning signs can be dismissed, how vulnerable the self becomes, and how care, love and dignity matter immensely. She shows us both the resilience that people can muster and the heartbreak that comes with watching someone change before your eyes.
It’s a difficult read, but necessary.
The book is available in hardback at £22, but is available from Amazon at £12.50. It is published by Macmillan.
