'Elizabeth is Missing' by Emma Healey
- Polly
- Jul 5, 2021
- 3 min read
Overall Rating: 3 out of 10
FTC disclaimer: I was not sent this product. I am not affiliated with the companies mentioned. All opinions are my own.
Plot introduction (by me) :
'Elizabeth is Missing' is narrated by Maud, an eighty year old woman living with dementia, who is convinced that her best friend, Elizabeth, is missing. However, the more Maud tries to find Elizabeth, the more she is interrupted by memories of another disappearance; that of her sister, Sukey, who was last seen in 1946. Can she solve the two mysteries before her mind collapses forever?
Despite the stellar reviews that plaster the cover of this book, I cannot say I'll be recommending 'Elizabeth is Missing' .
I simply dreaded picking the book up, and actually had to force myself to read over half of it aloud for fear of my eyes glazing over. The fact that this book, for the most part, failed to excite me is extremely disappointing, as there were many things that, in isolation, I loved about the novel.
For example, Healey's descriptions are beautifully, vividly, and cleverly written. But then on the flip side, the pace so rarely changes, and so they are lost in a drone.
The non-linear narrative is largely made up of flashbacks, (several of which I really enjoyed) that, by themselves, could have made up their own work of historical fiction. However, they are bordered by the present-day reflections of an eighty year old woman with dementia. It is not this concept that I disliked, in fact, I admired it, as my own grandmother is suffering with this awful illness. I feel I can better understand her experience, and can now be more empathetic in my own exchanges with the elderly. The issue was that we lost all thread of the plot every time we went back to the present day which, although heightening our sense of suspense, sometimes felt overdone.
The problem in this novel is that there are only two suspects to the crime, the identity of the culprit becomes fairly obvious. There were no wild goose chases, no moments where I was shocked by an unexpected twist or turn of events. I just found myself trudging through the novel until everything exploded, in a slightly cliche way, in the last two chapters.
Those last two chapters made sense of all of Maud's seemingly random thoughts, and almost made me want to re-read the book. In fact, by the time I finished the book at 23:30 last night, I found myself holding the duvet over my head, plagued by the sinister turn of events; always a good sign! But unfortunately, the end of the novel did not improved my already soured relationship with this book.
Author: https://www.emmahealey.co.uk/
Review written on 05/07/2021
Book discovery: Recommended to me by a careers adviser, and I then bought it from a charity shop.
Quotations
“I feel rather drab and shy for a few minutes. But then I remember that I am old and nobody is looking at me.”
"I worried her, wandering off like that, she says. Funny how things are reversed. Helen was always running away when she was a child."
"Her lips are cracked, but she pulls them into a smile, she pulls one half into a smile, and tries again to speak. I feel as though I'm failing to catch something precious. The words tumble out and hit the floor and are lost."
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