![\"Cover](\"https:\/\/joind.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/Elizabeth-is-missing-540.jpg\")
<\/a>At least we presume she has some kind of dementia. \u00a0Maud describes herself as \u201cforgetful\u201d.\u00a0 She sometimes recognises her daughter, Helen, and sometimes doesn\u2019t.\u00a0 She gets into all kinds of muddles, despite the little notes she leaves herself to remember the important things.\u00a0 She still wanders off. She still goes to a church but can\u2019t remember her own name when somebody asks it. To have such an unreliable narrator as the protagonist in a whodunit is charming, compassionate and original.<\/p>\nOver the course of the novel Maud\u2019s memory deteriorates in a way that many will recognise. Maud has a friend, Elizabeth, of a similar age.\u00a0 Elizabeth is missing.\u00a0 Maud is convinced of that.\u00a0 She goes to Elizabeth\u2019s house and Elizabeth is no longer there.\u00a0 She keeps telling people Elizabeth is missing \u2013 Helen, the police, Elizabeth\u2019s son \u2013 but no one takes her seriously.\u00a0 Maud is determined to find her.<\/p>\n
Novel about dementia<\/h3>\n
At one level this is a story of someone with dementia who has become fixated on something and keeps repeating it over and over again.\u00a0 \u201cElizabeth is missing.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 Towards the end of the novel it becomes apparent that Elizabeth is in hospital and Maud has been told many times where she is and even taken to visit. We feel for Maud who can\u2019t remember this and therefore can\u2019t be assuaged in her anxiety. We feel for Helen in her attempt to stay patient and loving.<\/p>\n
But this is not the only tale being told.\u00a0 Maud\u2019s short term memory is such that if she has a cup of tea she can\u2019t remember to drink it. Her long term memory, however, is lucid.<\/p>\n
Novel about missing sister<\/h3>\n
Seventy years ago, her older sister, Sukey, who was married to Frank and lived nearby went missing. Nobody knew what happened to her.\u00a0 Her body was never found. Naturally, this was a traumatic experience for the young Maud and events in the old Maud\u2019s life bring back the memories of what happened when the family heard Sukey had gone and set about trying to find her.<\/p>\n
Old Maud\u2019s distress that Elizabeth is missing echoes young Maud\u2019s distress that Sukey is missing. A bottle of Macallan whisky by the kerb of the road in the present reminds Maud of a bottle of Macallan whisky being drunk by Frank, all those year ago.<\/p>\n
Neat story telling<\/h3>\n
And so it is that the story of what happened seventy years ago is woven into the tale of what is happening in the present. The reader can guess that the cause of Elizabeth\u2019s disappearance is entirely innocent even if we are not told, until the end, where she is.\u00a0 The cause of Sukey\u2019s disappearance is another matter.\u00a0 Was she kidnapped? Did she commit suicide? Was she murdered? And if so, who did it? Was it the dodgy and sometimes violent Frank? Was it Douglas the lodger who evidently knows far more than he is letting on? Was it the terrifying mad woman who hangs about in hedges?<\/p>\n
To tell the two tales in this way is a neat literary device, partly because it\u2019s a credible depiction of the mind of someone with dementia \u2013 clear about the past and confused by the here and now – but also because it provides some page-turning suspense in the midst of the muddlesome present.<\/p>\n
Boring and depressing<\/h3>\n
I\u2019ll be honest \u2013 I found the start of the novel and subsequent narrations by the old Maud hard to read.\u00a0 I found them boring and depressing.\u00a0 I found them boring, for the same reason that being with someone with dementia can be boring if you aren\u2019t prepared to enter into a different way of being to be alongside that person. And while I might be prepared to do that for someone I love, it might not be what I would choose to do for my leisure. It can be depressing too, raising all those difficult feelings. What happened to the person she once was?\u00a0 Why can\u2019t I console her? What if this happens to me?<\/p>\n
The clever thing about placing the Sukey-is-missing-tale within the Elizabeth-is-missing-story is that it offers some respite from these feelings that many of us prefer to avoid. Around the middle of the novel, the Sukey story becomes a gripping whodunit that provides enough forward-momentum to more than off-set the lack of action in Maud\u2019s present reality.<\/p>\n
At the end the two stories dovetail and the loose ends are tidied up. \u00a0Details that appear first as mere fixations are woven into the grand denouement as their significance is explained. The novel is very well crafted, which explains why Elizabeth is Missing won the Costa First Novel Award 2014, why the TV rights have been sold and why it was the subject of a bidding war between nine publishers.<\/p>\n
Sympathetically told<\/h3>\n
As well as the style of narration, I would applaud Emma Healey for the sympathy with which she depicts all her characters. By weaving the story of young Maud within the mind of old Maud, the reader is reminded of the rich, if confusing, world that someone with dementia might be living in. At the end of the novel, Maud, Helen, the long-suffering and sometimes irritable daughter, and even the person we suspect is responsible for Sukey\u2019s disappearance, are all held in loving compassion.<\/p>\n
The novel serves to remind us that \u201cMaud\u201d might well wander into our church. We will meet people with dementia at the corner shop, at the bus stop or in the public library if we haven\u2019t already. I hope that through reading Elizabeth is Missing, we might imagine how to honour that person\u2019s reality, even if that reality is different from our own.<\/p>\n