In this darkly riveting debut novel—a sophisticated psychological mystery that is also an heartbreakingly honest meditation on memory, identity, and aging—an elderly woman descending into dementia embarks on a desperate quest to find the best friend she believes has disappeared, and her search for the truth will go back decades and have shattering consequences.
Maud, an aging grandmother, is … grandmother, is slowly losing her memory—and her grip on everyday life. Yet she refuses to forget her best friend Elizabeth, whom she is convinced is missing and in terrible danger.
But no one will listen to Maud—not her frustrated daughter, Helen, not her caretakers, not the police, and especially not Elizabeth’s mercurial son, Peter. Armed with handwritten notes she leaves for herself and an overwhelming feeling that Elizabeth needs her help, Maud resolves to discover the truth and save her beloved friend.
This singular obsession forms a cornerstone of Maud’s rapidly dissolving present. But the clues she discovers seem only to lead her deeper into her past, to another unsolved disappearance: her sister, Sukey, who vanished shortly after World War II.
As vivid memories of a tragedy that occurred more fifty years ago come flooding back, Maud discovers new momentum in her search for her friend. Could the mystery of Sukey’s disappearance hold the key to finding Elizabeth?
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This was something different. The main character, Maud, is an elderly lady suffering from dementia who is convinced something has happened to her best friend Elizabeth. I could identify well with her. My mother had dementia and the behaviour Maud displays rang true – even down to the obsession with buying tinned fruit.
Although it’s Elizabeth Maud is worried about and trying to find, she unwittingly uncovers a much older mystery, one which has troubled her for much of her life.
It made a refreshing change to read something so different, with a completely different slant on the usual murder mystery.
Maud, 82 and suffering from dementia, is overwrought that her friend, Elizabeth, is missing. Or maybe not, she can’t really remember. She has notes in her pockets and in her purse; some tell her Elizabeth is missing and others say definitely not. If only she could remember. And try she does, but as she tries to make sense of Elizabeth’s disappearance, memories flood back of another disappearance, this of her older sister Sukey who simply vanished in 1946. As Maud’s dementia worsens and she spins further and further from reality, she begins to puzzle back together the details of her sister’s disappearance, making startling discoveries from a distance of 70 years.
I have to say: Wow, I loved this book! Emma Healey’s Elizabeth Is Missing is one of the most fascinating, amazing, well-constructed novels I have read this year. Often, parallel narratives can fall apart, but this one simply gets better as the book progresses. What’s more, this is a stunning, poignant look at aging and dementia. The reader can feel the losses and confusion mount around Maud and her daughter Helen, whom Maud is often unable to recognize. Healey creates a genuine portrait of a woman falling away from the world and, frankly, Elizabeth Is Missing is all the more terrifying for being so. (I couldn’t help but think – repeatedly – how very much I did not want to end up like Maud, missing sister and friend aside.)
The bottom line: I read this entire book in less than 48 hours. It is simply wonderful. I cannot recommend it enough.
(This review was originally published at http://www.thisyearinbooks.com/2014/07/elizabeth-is-missing.html)
Wow, what an incredible ride! This book swept me into the two story lines and kept me interested to the end. I figured out more or less what had happened early on, but the narrative style kept me riveted. There was some not so subtle foreshadowing with random comments about people not knowing what’s under their feet and Maud’s recurring questions about how to plant summer squash. The characters are almost archetypal: spunky Maud, long-suffering Helen, evil Peter, whimsical Katy, evilly charming Frank, pitiful Douglas, Maud’s stoic parents, and of course, the mad woman! I really loved it!
Maud has dementia. She is convinced her friend, Elizabeth has disappeared. She is trying to look for her.
Maud has “carers” , what I would call home health workers, who come every morning to clean, do laundry, fix Maud’s lunch and lay out her meds. Maud is then left alone the rest of the day until her daughter stops by to check on her.
I knew really fast that Maud should not be alone, at all. She wanders around, gets lost, gets picked up by the cops, leaves the gas on, harasses people and forgets everything she does. She writes herself notes to help remember, but then forgets what the notes mean.
Maud’s sister disappeared when Maud was a tween. Sukey was never found. She was married to a black marketer and was just gone one day. Maud and her parents looked for her for months and kept hoping she would show up like other war wives.
Maud isn’t all that likable. She wasn’t likable when she was younger either. Something about the way she was when she was young made me really disapprove of her and her actions. I wondered where her parents were and why they weren’t paying attention, it was just after the war.
Maud’s daughter Helen eventually moves Maud into her house, but by then she has really gone down mentally. The book bounces back and forth from the present, where Maud thinks Elizabeth is missing, to the time her sister Sukey disappeared. I thought for a lot of the book that Elizabeth had died and Maud just couldn’t accept the fact.
I felt really badly for Maud, even though I didn’t like her. Dementia is savage. At first I thought her daughter, Helen was sort of hard core, but must say she did a much better job of it than I would have been able to do.
I finished the book because I wanted to find out what had happened to Sukey. But it is a depressing book and I stopped and restarted reading it a lot. It was hard to read because of the subject matter. It hit too close to home.
Elizabeth is Missing is one of the best books I read in a long time. The characters, particularly Maud, are living-breathing people. Emma Healey brings Maud to life. She is an old lady who is bumbling about her life, forgetting about the basics and struggling with confusion, but carrying on regardless. I know at least one Maud out there; everybody does. She is portrayed so skilfully and so aptly that I, as a reader, felt as if I were intruding on her, following her, sometimes trying to tell her, “Oh Maud, remember your hand! It’s going to hurt if you pull that bandage off!”
The story is constructed seamlessly. In the present day Maud leaves for herself endless notes to remind herself that her friend Elizabeth is missing. She pursues her suspicions tirelessly, driving those around her to despair. Her recollection of the present day is sketchy, but her memories of the post-war past are as sharp as a razor. Those memories are woven into her present-day haze to bring the mystery of her long missing sister into sharp focus. The present and the past are masterfully entwined and as the story progresses Maud uncovers the long-buried truths. Whether she is fully aware of that or not is another matter…
A fantastic story about the strength of willpower in the face of memory loss and brewing guilt. A triumph of the spirit over mind.
I loved Healey’s choice of genre, mainly because it creates a sense of uncertainty and feeling that also characterize the lives of people with dementia or Alzheimer’s disease. The book is very readable, suspenseful and the reader is swept away by the mystery and longs to discover the solution finally. Indeed, as in every thriller worthy of its name, the lines of the puzzle are closed correctly and neatly. But the writer doesn’t choose the easy way, and since life is not a drama story, the exciting plot line is not all closed but remains as vague as life itself.
In short, this is a fascinating book, spiced with humor and the qualities of a first-rate thriller.
So I have heard loads about this book almost all good things, I don’t think I have heard a bad review of this book. And overall this book has been raved about and it does deserve to be raved about, but with all books come problems and I did have a few with this but I don’t know if it was how it was written rather than my issues with the book.
Issue #1: Maud’s family. Her daughter, I don’t know whether they did actually tell her Elizabeth was in hospital and Maud just forgot. But what I got from it is that they didn’t tell her, they just told her that Elizabeth was ok, without giving her any other information. When she talks about they just brush her off and tell her to forget about it. Especially when she is writing notes to herself, her daughter knew she was doing it, so why didn’t she write down on a note saying Elizabeth is ok. Rather than trying to get her to forget. At least at the end, she goes to see Elizabeth again which I am very glad about.
Issue #2: Elizabeth’s Son. For the life of me I cannot remember his name but either way I didn’t like him. How he yelled at Maud, like fair enough she did ring him in the middle of the night but even when she put the advert out for Elizabeth he was just angry, and you could tell that she was losing it slightly. But he still just shouted. So that made me mad. He should be glad that somebody is out there and caring for his mum rather than being angry that she is doing things like that.
Issue #3: THE POLICE! Like I understand wasting police time is a serious offence but the way they treat Maud. I don’t know whether that was just from Maud’s point of view how they were treating her, but you don’t treat old women who are slowly loosing it like that. So it annoyed me.
As I said, I don’t know whether it was the way the book was written or if it was meant to seem like that. But I say that’s how it came over to me and I loved the book don’t get me wrong but those 3 issues up there put me off slightly. It could be how it was written but I don’t know… I just I didn’t like them things that they did.
Now for things I actually did like about this book, start with the bad end with the good.
I loved the entwining of Sukey and Elizabeth’s story line with both of them running side by side and how Maud is thinking about her sister and the fact that her body was never found and she didn’t know what happened to them. But as she is looking for Elizabeth her memory brings up what happened to her sister again. If I’m honest I preferred the Sukey storyline rather than Elizabeth’s. Though they ran side by side I just preferred that one. But they were both very good and I did love how it was written.
Maud’s character did make me laugh although you could say she was kind of loosing it, her character was quite funny and although it was a very serious thing and a very serious topic it was done comically Maud’s character just made it better. I can’t really explain what I mean unless you read it and then you might understand what I meant.
This book isn’t usually what I read so when I read it I was surprised by how much I did actually like it, so I do recommend people read this book. I think they will like it and may have issues like I did.