{"id":241,"date":"2020-11-20T09:41:12","date_gmt":"2020-11-20T09:41:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/?p=241"},"modified":"2020-11-20T09:41:12","modified_gmt":"2020-11-20T09:41:12","slug":"elizabeth-is-missing-emma-healey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/2020\/11\/20\/elizabeth-is-missing-emma-healey\/","title":{"rendered":"Elizabeth is Missing\u2013 Emma Healey"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Debut author Emma Healey won the Costa Book Awards in 2014 for <em>Elizabeth is Missing<\/em>, 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\u2019s good friend Elizabeth hasn\u2019t come to visit in quite some time and Maud is becoming extremely worried about her. She pesters the GP and repeatedly phones Elizabeth\u2019s son in the middle of the night. She drives her own daughter Helen crazy with constant questions about Elizabeth. Maud\u2019s distress is amplified by the fact that Dementia is blurring the line between past and present. Elizabeth\u2019s 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\u2019s head.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>\u201cPerhaps I should put a note through Elizabeth\u2019s door. Just to say I\u2019ve been. Just to say I was looking for her, in case she comes back. Dad did that for Sukey.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>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\u2019s happened to Elizabeth and, by default, Sukey. It\u2019s difficult to process which pieces of information offered by Maud are true and which red herrings, or misinterpretations. We\u2019re not sure which case is real and which a figment of Maud\u2019s imagination. Though possessed by the notion that she\u2019s on some kind of urgent quest -a common occurrence in people living with Dementia- at times Maud doesn\u2019t know what she\u2019s trying to accomplish herself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>\u201cEven if I knew what I wanted, how could I ever find it? \u2018I\u2019m looking for something,\u2019 I say to the man, \u2018I just can\u2019t recall, you know.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>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\u2019s conclusion is a little too neat, <em>Elizabeth is Missing<\/em> is still an interesting glimpse into the experience of a person living with Dementia. It\u2019s rare to find a first person narrator with Dementia employed throughout the entirety of the book and the range and scope of Maud\u2019s experience -thoughts, memories, interpretations and dialogue- offers a really comprehensive snapshot of both what it\u2019s 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\u2019s treated and viewed by her family, healthcare professionals and the other people she comes across. These sections read as extremely realistic and quite illuminating. <em>Elizabeth is Missing<\/em> 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Elizabeth is Missing was published by Viking in 2014<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":901,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[5,10,30,6,12,14],"class_list":["post-241","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","tag-carers","tag-elderly","tag-english","tag-family","tag-novel","tag-woman"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/901"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=241"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":242,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241\/revisions\/242"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/dementiafiction\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}