It was hard to communicate with my mother or father, until reading a book out loud led to a discovery It was hard to communicate with my mother or father, until reading a book out loud led to a discovery T he novelist Ian McEwan has advocated for the extension of assisted dying to people with dementia, commenting on the deeply distressing experience of his own mother: “By the time my mother was well advanced and could not recognise anyone, she was dead. She was alive and dead all at once. It