Counting Backwards

Binnie Kirshenbaum

eBook - 2025

From the author of Rabbits for Food comes a profound and deeply moving new novel about a middle-aged couple's struggle with the husband’s descent into early onset Lewy Body dementia, shot through with Kirshenbaum’s signature lacerating humor. “Gutsy, funny, heart-wrenching.”—The New York Times Book Review It begins with hallucinations. From their living room window, Leo sees a man on stilts, an acting troupe, a pair of swans paddling on the Manhattan streets below. Then he’s unable to perform simple tasks and experiences a host of other erratic disturbances, none of which his doctors can explain. Leo, 53, a research scientist, and Addie, a collage artist, have a loving and happy marriage. They’d planned on many more years... of work and travel, dinner with friends, quiet evenings at home with the cat. But as Leo’s periods of lucidity become rarer, those dreams fall away, and... more