My rating: 5 of 5 stars
An old woman, whose memory is fading away slowly, is caught in the web of a mystery surrounding her missing best friend and her missing sister. Elizabeth is Missing written by Emma Healey is a thoroughly intriguing and a highly compelling novel.
Synopsis:
Maud is a 82years old woman, suffering from dementia. She is getting forgetful hence she writes notes to remind herself of petty things and to keep up with her own life. She couldn't reach her best friend Elizabeth, so she assumes something terrible has happened to her and keeps repeating that Elizabeth is missing. She chants those words to everybody around her, to her daughter, Elizabeth's sons, police-men, but nobody pays heed to her. She tangles the present situation of Elizabeth with her own sister, Sukey, who disappeared after the end of the war in London.
The author has woven the story in a very beautiful way by giving two angles to the plot, one is the mystery with the right elements of twists and turns and the other is the old age, memory-loss. Her story-telling is wonderful; it's more like she manages to bring this drama into our rooms, as if every detail is unfolding right in front of her eyes. The story is so gripping that it'll completely hook you from its very first pages. Maud's character totally justifies and fits perfectly with the plot, a woman whom no one pays attention to, as it’s getting harder for her to remember things. We can feel her frustration and pain and the author gives us a thorough insight into the life of an old woman suffering from dementia and how she manages to unravel a mystery surrounding her best friend and her sister.
Verdict: It’s one of the most anticipated novels of this year, undoubtedly the best and the most intense one.
Courtesy: Thank you Penguin for providing me with an ARC.
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Author Info:
Emma Healey is a writer and editor who currently lives in Toronto. Her first book, Begin with the End in Mind, was published by Arbeiter Ring Publishing in 2012. Her fiction, poetry and nonfiction have been featured in various publications including The LA Review of Books, the Hairpin, the National Post, the Toronto Star, Matrix, Joyland, The Puritan, Maisonneuve, Broken Pencil, Said the Gramophone, the Void, CV2 and Lemon Hound. She was the recipient of the Irving Layton award for poetry in both 2010 and 2013, and is not British.
She was also the founder and editor-in-chief of the Incongruous Quarterly, an online literary magazine devoted to the publication of unpublishable literature.
Visit her here
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