03 October 2015

Book 96: Elizabeth is Missing by Emma Healey


Read most of this in a single day (aided by a train journey, but it was very readable as well). Told from the point of view of Maud, an eldery woman who is losing her memory to dementia, this is the story of Maud's friend, Elizabeth, who seems to be missing - and no one is doing anything. Of course, it's more complicated than that, and tied up in Maud's concern for Elizabeth is her memory of her own sister disappearing in postwar Britain around seventy years before. The writing is really wonderful - painfully like what it must be like to be inside the mind of someone whose memory is beginning to degenerate - the episodes from the past are clear and vivid; present day varies from complete haze to moments of extreme lucidity - and the stories - both the older plot line and the present day one are just right. A super book. 

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