Book review: Still Alice

Issue: BCMJ, vol. 51, No. 8, October 2009, Page 355 News
By: Cynthia Verchere, MD

Book cover for Still Alice

Still Alice. By Lisa Genova. Toronto: Pocket Books (Simon and Schuster Inc.), 2007. ISBN: 978-1439102817. Paperback, 320 pages. $17.50.

This book haunts me. It is the realistic fictional account of a brilliant cognitive psychologist and Harvard researcher who has an international reputation in her study of the acquisition and mechanisms of language. At the age of 50, after episodes of forgetfulness (some uncomfortably familiar to me), she is diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer disease. The story is written mainly from her perspective as she descends into her dementia from a life dependent on the superiority of her brain function. Its effect on her career, her spouse, her children, and her own perception of who she really is are beautifully and poignantly documented. The writing is excellent; the author is herself a PhD in neuroscience at Harvard; she has since been lauded by many Alzheimer groups for giving dementia a true and unvarnished portrayal. Reading the book has also opened my eyes to clinical facts of early dementia that I might otherwise have ignored, and by reading this story from Alice’s perspective, my compassion for those with dementia has increased manyfold.

—CV

Cynthia Verchere, MD. Book review: Still Alice. BCMJ, Vol. 51, No. 8, October, 2009, Page(s) 355 - News.


Above is the information needed to cite this article in your paper or presentation. The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) recommends the following citation style, which is the now nearly universally accepted citation style for scientific papers:
Halpern SD, Ubel PA, Caplan AL, Marion DW, Palmer AM, Schiding JK, et al. Solid-organ transplantation in HIV-infected patients. N Engl J Med. 2002;347:284-7.

About the ICMJE and citation styles

The ICMJE is small group of editors of general medical journals who first met informally in Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1978 to establish guidelines for the format of manuscripts submitted to their journals. The group became known as the Vancouver Group. Its requirements for manuscripts, including formats for bibliographic references developed by the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM), were first published in 1979. The Vancouver Group expanded and evolved into the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), which meets annually. The ICMJE created the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals to help authors and editors create and distribute accurate, clear, easily accessible reports of biomedical studies.

An alternate version of ICMJE style is to additionally list the month an issue number, but since most journals use continuous pagination, the shorter form provides sufficient information to locate the reference. The NLM now lists all authors.

BCMJ standard citation style is a slight modification of the ICMJE/NLM style, as follows:

  • Only the first three authors are listed, followed by "et al."
  • There is no period after the journal name.
  • Page numbers are not abbreviated.


For more information on the ICMJE Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals, visit www.icmje.org

BCMJ Guidelines for Authors

Leave a Reply