An old woman who spent her life as a proofreader, correcting other people’s words, starts losing her own.
That’s Michka, in Les Gratitudes (2019) by Delphine de Vigan (in Spanish, Las gratitudes, Anagrama, 2020). Aphasia forces her into a care home, and two people keep her company: Marie, the neighbour she looked after as a girl, and Jérôme, the speech therapist trying to win some language back. Michka has one pending wish: to find the couple who hid her as a child during the German occupation and saved her from the camps, and thank them. She never got to.
De Vigan wrote it with her aunt in mind, who died at 99 in a care home. The reviews speak of old age, lost words and unpaid debts of gratitude, told gently, without melodrama and with some humour. I haven’t read it, so that’s their verdict, not mine yet.
https://www.anagrama-ed.es/libro/panorama-de-narrativas/las-gratitudes/9788433980830/PN_1041