Elizabeth is Missing by Emma Healey is very good value as a novel as you get three engaging stories all rolled into one. The past, the present overlaid with what it feels like to try and navigate the world through the spreading fog of dementia.
The book is so well written that it is hard to imagine how this could possibly be a debut novel, but Emma Healey writes with the confidence of one who has written a shelf full of books to help her develop such a convincing style. The book is written from the perspective of Maud, who is growing increasingly confused, but is still at that frightening stage where she is aware of what is happening. Dementia is one of our greatest fears and, at 62, I found Maud's struggles unsettling as this is a condition that can affect anyone, no matter how sharp a mind may have been in younger years.
Elizabeth is Maud's friend who she met while volunteering at the local Oxfam shop. Elizabeth is no longer at home, and her house is all closed up whenever Maud knocks at the door, and she suspects Elizabeth's son has something to do with her disappearance. As with many dementia sufferers, the past drifts in and out of the present, and Maud's concerns for Elizabeth are rooted in the disappearance of her older sister just after the war. Her sister Sukey was married to an unsuitable man who made a living from shady deals and bought and sold goods on the Black Market, and the family felt sure he had murdered Sukey, but nothing was ever proved.
This unsolved crime had preyed on Maud's mind over the intervening years, and from time to time she had discovered pieces of the puzzle that might finally solve the mystery of what happened to Sukey, but dementia stops her from linking the pieces together.
As the reader, we feel Maud's frustration as she struggles to get her daughter Helen to understand what she wants to say, but we can also appreciate Helen's situation where she is trying to cope with Maud's unpredictable behaviours. Dealing with someone whose memory is going is terribly frustrating as it doesn't matter how often they are told not to do something, they simply won't remember being told. Maud is trying to bridge the gaps in her memory by writing things down on Post-it notes, but even that doesn't work when the words have no meaning when she takes them out of her pocket to read over.
To someone not trying to deal with it on a daily basis, dementia can seem amusing. The cupboards full of canned peaches, the same stories repeated over and over again, but this book is always very sensitively written, and although some of the characters are not as tolerant as they might be, Maud is never mocked and I think it will help people understand how to respond to sufferers.
This was my second reading of the book, and although I remembered the basic story line, I found I was able to enjoy it just as much as the first time as the writing is so good.
Comments
Post a Comment