Elegy for Iris, by John Bayley. St. Martin's Press, 1999

'Iris' is Iris Murdoch, the renown novelist and professor of philosophy at Oxford. The elegy was written before her death but after she was deep in the clutches of Alzheimer's disease, her brilliant, creative mind reduced to that of a toddler. John Bayley was her husband of forty some years who cared for her by himself until the last couple of months of her illness.

'Elegy' moves fluidly through time, with the history of Iris and John's relationship interspersed with the here and now of their life with Alzheimer's. Theirs was an unusual courtship- he fell in love with her at first sight, while thinking her to be totally unlike who she really was; she fell in love with him on their first date, despite his utter lack of social graces. She was involved with others at the time of their meeting, and it took her awhile to disentangle herself from them; he lived only for her.