Changing the Subject by Kate Abley: book review

Note: I received a free copy to independently review.

Changing the Subject (2019) is set in Chingford, North East London in 2019 at the time of Brexit, and in 1979.

Fifty-eight year old Sue Duggen is in Puerto Rico, after arriving illegally in a Somali boat after evading hospital, and she has to get back to England. She has Alzheimer’s and has been in a drug trial for Zabtrex for a year to prevent the deterioration of her mind.

She has a sister Jan, and two children—Jo and Sam—but Sue looks 18 years old due to the drug trial going horribly wrong. Instead of preventing an aged mind, it has de-aged her skin. Now everyone wants her DNA to regenerate other people—she is worth a fortune, and she is in danger.

She is in danger from herself, because her Alzheimer’s is making her delusional. Why is everyone talking to her in such a condescending manner? She is eighteen and just wants to go home to Mum and Dad—why don’t people understand that?

Sue remembers the late 1970s well—when her name was Sue Jolly. She remembers Margaret Thatcher and the rise of feminism, studying art, how much she looked like her mother, and she remembers her parents’ divorce, and Steve Duggen—her ex-husband.

And when the government’s ethics doctor arrives, is Sue’s privacy still the top priority? Ethics, conspiracies, experimental research, human rights, genetics, gerontology, rejuvenation, Extinction Rebellion, illegal immigration, racism, politics, and the law are all mentioned in this fast-talking novel.

This is a comedic view of Sue with Alzheimer’s—but with all the poignancy of reality. Told in the third person, it is largely conversational rather than descriptive, the majority is reflective rather than episodic, and it is loose and free with punctuations and question marks. Why is everything a question? It’s also extremely colloquial to British circumstances, current affairs, language, and idioms, which might baffle some readers, but worth a read.

MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of: Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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