. LaPlante tells the story poignantly, gracefully and artistically...Despite the near stream-of-consciousness, Faulknerian Sound and Fury presentation, the narrative is easily followed to the resolution of the mystery and White’s ultimate melancholy and inevitable end.

A haunting story masterfully told.

For us, the supposedly normal, seeing the truth through the scrim of an unreliable perspective makes the story more layered and, paradoxically, its meaning clearer....

"Turn of Mind" has its own contemporary twist on this device. ...So how does LaPlante, who teaches writing at Stanford and San Francisco State, pull a story out of someone with no memory? In a word: deftly.

Alzheimer's disease doesn't seem like a great subject for a page-turner. Affecting 10% of us over 65 and 50% older than 85, it inspires dread in the culture. And yet a page-turner is exactly what Alice LaPlante has crafted with "Turn of Mind," a novel told from the point of view of a woman with dementia. LaPlante manages to take hold of the aforementioned dread and modulate it, creating a startling range and texture of fear. From agonizing, slow-motion-car-crash moments to the ironic frissons of a good horror movie, she hits every bell.

Turn of Mind is a debut novel by Alice LaPlante billed as a "literary thriller": that it sure is.... what bumps Turn of Mind up into the exalted Daphne du Maurier/Ruth Rendell category of "literary thriller" is LaPlante's fearless and compassionate investigation into the erosion of her main character's mind. ..If this were a straight work of literary fiction, that grim storyline might be too hard to stick with; but, that's where the suspense formula rescues this tale from despair.

Unreliable narrators come in many shapes...And then there is Dr. Jennifer White, who narrates Alice LaPlante’s first novel. By the time “Turn of Mind” begins, she is losing her wits to Alzheimer’s disease and is the prime suspect in her best friend’s murder. She is as unreliable as they come. ...Alzheimer’s is bleak territory, and to saddle Jennifer with suspected murder seems cruel and unusual punishment. But in LaPlante’s vivid prose, her waning mind proves a prism instead of a prison, her memory refracted to rich, sensual effect. ....The twists and turns of mind this novel charts are haunting and original.