Best Books About Caregiving--Fiction and Memoir

There are lots of books to tell you how to be a caregiver—books for spouses, siblings and adult children.

There are specialized books for caring for someone with Alzheimer’s or cancer or Parkinson's Disease etc. But sometimes you want or need more than a how-to book, and more than the facts—you want to know about the feelings, and to know how someone else felt when they were where you are. And for that we have to go to literature.

I teach a class on the Literature of Caregiving, and I have found that these are those are the kinds of books that caregivers crave and relate to. These are the books that often answer the questions that no one knew that they needed to ask.

So, here are some of my favorite books about caregiving. You’ll have some surprises I’m sure, but caregiving is nothing new to humankind, and great works of literature touch all situations and all of the feelings that make us human.

 

Caregiving Memoirs:

Autobiography of a Face, Lucy Grealy

Cancer Vixen, Marisa Acocella Marchetto (It’s a graphic novel)

Midstream, Le Anne Schreiber

Landscape Without Gravity, Barbara Lazear Ascher

Truth and Beauty, Anne Patchett

The Story of My Father, Sue Miller

Low Down: Jazz, Junk and Fairy Tales. AJ Albany

The Broken Chord, Michael Dorris

Operating Instructions, Anne Lamott

Three Dog Life, Abigail Thomas

The Best Day/The Worst Day: Life with Jane Kenyon, Donald Hall

The Two Kinds of Decay, Sarah Manguso

 

Caregiving Fiction:

We are All Welcome Here, Elizabeth Berg

A Patchwork Planet, Anne Tyler

Celestial Navigation, Anne Tyler

Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy

King Lear, William Shakespeare

Add a few of these to your Winter reading. On the couch, in bed, and in your caregiving tote for doctor's offices and waiting rooms. You’ll be in good hands, and good company.