Tag: Woman

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Elizabeth is Missing– Emma Healey

Debut author Emma Healey won the Costa Book Awards in 2014 for Elizabeth is Missing, a clever and gripping novel about a woman who is trying to solve a decades old crime whilst living with Dementia. The novel is narrated by Maud, an elderly lady who is increasingly confused about both the world around her and important events from her past. Maud’s good friend Elizabeth hasn’t come to visit in quite some time and Maud is becoming extremely worried about her. She pesters the GP and repeatedly phones Elizabeth’s son in the middle of the night. She drives her own daughter Helen crazy with constant questions about Elizabeth. Maud’s distress is amplified by the fact that Dementia is blurring the line between past and present. Elizabeth’s disappearance has become muddled in her mind with the disappearance of her older sister Sukey, seventy years previously. Memories of the two women blend and intertwine inside Elizabeth’s head.

“Perhaps I should put a note through Elizabeth’s door. Just to say I’ve been. Just to say I was looking for her, in case she comes back. Dad did that for Sukey.”

Maud is the ultimate unreliable narrator. She can no longer hold her own train of thought and this makes it difficult for the reader to keep track of her investigations as she takes notes, searches for clues and tries to follow leads, hoping to find out what’s happened to Elizabeth and, by default, Sukey. It’s difficult to process which pieces of information offered by Maud are true and which red herrings, or misinterpretations. We’re not sure which case is real and which a figment of Maud’s imagination. Though possessed by the notion that she’s on some kind of urgent quest -a common occurrence in people living with Dementia- at times Maud doesn’t know what she’s trying to accomplish herself.

“Even if I knew what I wanted, how could I ever find it? ‘I’m looking for something,’ I say to the man, ‘I just can’t recall, you know.”

Whilst I have some reservations about the use of Dementia as a narrative device -here, as a vehicle for solving a mystery- and I think the novel’s conclusion is a little too neat, Elizabeth is Missing is still an interesting glimpse into the experience of a person living with Dementia. It’s rare to find a first person narrator with Dementia employed throughout the entirety of the book and the range and scope of Maud’s experience -thoughts, memories, interpretations and dialogue- offers a really comprehensive snapshot of both what it’s like to live with Dementia and the resulting confusion, and how other people react to the condition. For me, the standout moments in the novel are those sections where Maud gives the reader insight into how she’s treated and viewed by her family, healthcare professionals and the other people she comes across. These sections read as extremely realistic and quite illuminating. Elizabeth is Missing is also an infinitely readable novel with a clever, well-structured plot and Maud is a genuinely likable and complex protagonist who I enjoyed spending time with.

Elizabeth is Missing was published by Viking in 2014

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Book Reviews

“Burnt Sugar” by Avni Doshi

Burnt Sugar is Avni Doshi’s debut novel. It was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2020. Set in Pune, India it is narrated by an artist named Antara who is struggling to come to terms with her past as she tries to work out how to care for her mother, who is living with early onset Dementia. This is a painfully honest look at caring for a close family member who isn’t particularly likeable.

“I would be lying if I said my mother’s misery has never given me pleasure.”

Tara has not been a particularly caring mother. Abandoning her loveless marriage, she brought young Tara up in a strange and sometimes frightening ashram, then briefly chose homelessness for the two of them just to spite her affluent parents. Antara has been dragged along on this crazy adventure, for the most part, reluctantly. Now, a fully grown adult and about to become a mother herself, Antara is thinking about her past and some of the bad decisions her mother has made. Unfortunately, Tara doesn’t remember their shared past in the same way. Both women feel the other is culpable for the mess they’ve made of their relationship. But with Tara’s increasing confusion, it’s almost impossible to know who’s telling the truth.

“It seems to me now that this forgetting is convenient, that she doesn’t want to remember the things she has said and done. It feels unfair that she can put away the past from her mind while I’m brimming with it all the time.”

Antara resents the way her mother has brought her up and yet feels compelled to care for her as the Dementia renders her increasingly reliant on others. Tara doesn’t make the process of reconciliation easy. She constantly contradicts her daughter’s take on events and eventually sets fire to her studio, destroying all her artwork. Antara interprets this act as an attempt to erase her identity.

The novel wrestles with complex questions about matriarchal relationships: these women can’t seem to exist without the other, yet also appear to be hell bent on destroying each other. Their narratives are in conflict, yet they also seem to have shaped each other’s stories and their own particular ideas of truth.

“Sometimes I think I am becoming my mother.”

“Reality is something that is co-authored.”

Burnt Sugar also explores the role of women within Indian culture, interrogating class and gender assumptions and how both have evolved over the span of Tara’s lifetime yet still have a long way to go. The novel is rich in cultural description and paints a powerful picture of how Dementia is viewed within a non-Western culture. I particularly enjoyed the scenes describing everyday domestic life and the culture which exists around food. It’s refreshing to read a depiction of someone living with Dementia who isn’t an elderly, white, middle-class woman. I’d like to read more narratives like this. I thoroughly enjoyed Burnt Sugar and found the character of Tara both intriguing and extremely frustrating. I can understand Antara’s reluctance to become her mother’s fulltime carer. A trying person who develops Dementia is usually just as trying as before their diagnosis, oftentimes more so.

Burnt Sugar was published by Hamish Hamilton in 2020

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Book Reviews

“Unbecoming” by Jenny Downham

Jenny Downham’s Young Adult novel about three generations of women has received rave reviews and I can absolutely see why. Unbecoming is a gripping read from the very first sentence.

“It was like an alien had landed. Really, it was that weird.”

Seventeen year old Katie’s estranged grandma comes crashing into her life in dramatic fashion. Mary has been left alone and in need of care after her partner dies suddenly. Katie knows nothing about the woman who abandoned her mother as a baby and can’t understand why her mum seems so reluctant to welcome this intriguing, imaginative older lady into their home when she’s so obviously in need of help. Katie’s mum has her own reasons to distrust Mary, besides her family is already quite complicated: Katie’s father has moved in with his girlfriend, whilst her younger brother Chris has complex, special needs. Katie herself is having a turbulent summer. Her relationship with her mother comes under strain as she begins to embrace her identity as a lesbian and experiences her first romance.

Mary brings fun, excitement and stories about the past into Katie’s life. She brightens up Katie’s dreary family life as together they work on piecing together the older woman’s memories. But Mary isn’t always easy to live with. Her Dementia means she requires constant care. Sometimes she remembers the past in short, lucid bursts. Sometimes she doesn’t know where she is or how to manage the simplest tasks. 

“Every morning I think I can do things, and by the afternoon it turns out I can’t.”

Mary’s Dementia is at the stage where she understands that something’s gone wrong but doesn’t know how to fix it. She’s prone to wander away from home and sometimes has outbursts. She’s desperate to be reconciled with her daughter and her grandchildren but her scattergun attempts at explaining the past and her own mistakes often lead to more upset. Unbecoming is a novel which questions the very idea of truth. If Mary remembers things one way and her daughter remembers the same incidents differently, who’s to say which version is right and whether the confusion associated with Dementia renders the person remembering less reliable or more inclined to speak the truth without considering the consequence?

“Mary had her version of the time she came to stay and Mum had hers…All the threads bind and twist together. And every time you look it’s different, because stories change in the telling.”

This is an incredibly readable novel. I flew through its almost 450 pages. It explores a whole range of themes -intergenerational relationships, LGBTQ, feminist and mental health issues, alongside Dementia- through the central narrative arc of unpicking the complexities of Mary’s life. The third person narration allows Downham to give us an overview of every character’s perspective and also to dip frequently into the past. The writing is moving and eloquent and the ending, resolved enough to feel satisfactory, yet far from cheesy or forced. There are so many things I enjoyed about this novel but what I loved most is the honest, funny and occasionally irreverent relationship between Katie and her grandma. If anything, Unbecoming is a romance. It’s the story of two women separated by a family rift, finding each other in the nick of time and very quickly falling in love.

Unbecoming was published by David Fickling Books in 2015