Review: Elizabeth is Missing by Emma Healey

Title: Elizabeth is Missing    

Author: Emma Healey        

Published: June 2014, Harper  

Format: Hardcover, 320 pages   

Source: Publisher via TLC Book Tours  

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 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?

My thoughts: This is Emma Healey’s debut novel and it was quite captivating and intriguing. This is a compelling look at the aging process told in the first person narrative and I have to say, I thought it was well done!

Maud is losing her memory, suffering from dementia and so she leaves notes for herself all over the house. These notes are supposed to help her remember what she’s already figured out or what she’s supposed to do. What she does know is that her friend Elizabeth seems to be missing. This becomes the main focus of her days, trying to find out what happened to Elizabeth. Not helping the situation is that Maud is able to remember the fact that her sister, Sukey, went missing when Maud was a young girl. 

I loved how this story is told in the first person present tense. You get the feeling of Maud’s frustration with her memory loss – how she starts to do something or go somewhere only to get there and not know why she’s there. Alternating with this, we get flashbacks of the past to the time when Maud’s sister went missing, right after WWII. This is shown in such clear detail which is in contrast to the unreliable present-time story. She clearly remembers much more about the past than she does the present, which shows us how her mind is working and not working.

While this is a fast read, it’s not an easy read. It’s very easy to relate to Maud’s daughter Helen whether you’ve gone through this with an aging parent yet or not. You can palpably feel the tension that these characters are dealing with. Is Elizabeth really missing? Maud’s unreliability as a narrator make you question this quite a bit. 

This is a book that stays with you long after you finish reading the last page. I know for sure that Maud is not going to be a character I forget anytime soon.  I am definitely looking forward to seeing what comes next from Emma Healey as this book is quite brilliant for a debut novel!

About the author: Emma Healey holds a degree in bookbinding and an MA in creative writing. Elizabeth Is Missing is her first novel. She lives in the UK.

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To see who else is participating in Emma Healey’s Elizabeth is Missing tour, click here.