Books - Elizabeth is Missing, by Emma Healey

This is a novel I keep hearing people talk about. It’s a mix of crime thriller and complex psychological literary experiment – a strange combination that works. Our narrator is Maud, an eighty-two year old woman with dementia, who realises she hasn’t seen her friend Elizabeth for quite some time. Still haunted by the disappearance of her sister almost seventy years ago, Maud latches onto the apparent disappearance of her friend. The novel then gives us an interweaving narrative both of Maud at eighty-two and of Maud at sixteen or so (I presume) when her sister disappeared.

With the exception of Banana Yoshimoto’s Kitchen (which I reviewed a few weeks ago), Healey’s Elizabeth is Missing is probably the most moving thing I’ve read in the last year. Healey narrates Maud’s dementia and increasing forgetfulness in a really tender and touching way. They are some brilliant details. Whether from films and real life we’re very used to the image of an elderly person not quite recognising their relations, their own children, or maybe forgetting where they live – but it’s the internal details I found particularly moving. There are moments when Maud forgets the words for certain objects. In her mind and narration a bath is not a ‘bath’ but a ‘cooking pot for humans’; cigarettes become ‘the things you light up’, and umbrellas are ‘shield’s from the rain. It’s makes the prose more authentic, and the story more poignant.

It’s an incredibly cleverly written novel, one that I imagine must have been very difficult to write on a technical level. The reader may know what Maud did and said three paragraphs ago, but she often has no idea. It makes it not only heart-wrenching to read at times, but shows off Healey’s excellent writing. The subtle repetition throughout of phrases, questions and memories, is very effective throughout. To weave a gripping plot into this complex narrative voice, as Healey does, is something that really impressed me.

The characterisation throughout is strong. Maud is sympathetic, complex and wonderful, and I like Helen and Katy too. In the flashbacks I really get a sense of Sukey and of her and Maud’s relationship before her disappearance. Frank and Douglas were in some ways to my mind the strongest characters in the book (with the exception perhaps of Maud). Frank especially was very cleverly and ambiguously drawn, so that I could never quite make out his character, in a really good way. However, I would have liked to know more about Patrick, to have a few more flashbacks to Maud’s life with him than those few glimpses we do get. And the character I really wanted more from was Elizabeth. The novel is structured around the fact that ‘Elizabeth is Missing’, but we see very little of her and Maud’s friendship. I love the little detail that Maud often brings her chocolate that her son doesn’t let her have, but I wanted more. It would have been nice (and perhaps natural, in terms of how memory works), if amongst those the flashbacks more relevant to the plot, we could have had other ones, memories of her and Elizabeth’s friendship. I did find at times in this novel that Elizabeth feels too much like a narrative device to let Maud explore the past.

Which brings me on to another point. I love novels that have two interweaving stories, and I especially love novels that have a historical story weaved into a present day narrative. I love that aspect of the structure of the novel – but at times it does feel a little clumsily done. That is, Healey feels the need to find a specific trigger for every memory Maud has of the past, a moment, a smell, a word, a face, and so on. Now on the one hand, this is natural, and old memories are often triggered by little things, I imagine especially so if your memory is fading – but not in neat chronological order. I would have been more than happy for the narrative to just skip into past tense and into Maud’s memories of the past. As it is each transition feels a little clumsy and formulaic, especially as most chapters tend to have the same structure: present, past flashback, present. These moments of transition feel often quite unnatural, which brought me out of the story. Still, this is a minor point in the midst of a great novel.

And now we come to the ending. I’ve heard a few people on twitter getting a little cross about the ending of Elizabeth is Missing, and I myself am conflicted about it. The final chapter is fitting, moving, superb. I had tears in my eyes. (On a side note, it’s just occurred to me that this blog of mine must give the impression that the majority of my life is spent crying over books, mostly whilst on trains. I promise it isn’t entirely true. It’s merely that I happen to read a lot of sad books, and if a novel brings me to tears I absolutely want to review it and share it with the world. I don’t just cry indiscriminately at everything I read. I promise.) Anyway, the thing is that I’m less sure about the rest of the ending, about the resolution itself. It’s not that I didn’t like it or that I don’t think it works so much as that I’m just not sure. If you want to read more about my view on the ending click the spoiler button below, but please only do so if you’ve read the novel, because it’s a great book and I don’t want to spoil it for you. 

Okay, so bits of the resolution worked very well. I figured out very early on that Elizabeth was in a hospital or a care home, but I think maybe you’re supposed to. The connection between Douglas and the madwoman was very cleverly done and I really didn’t see it coming. I also didn’t work out the significance of the novel’s prologue until the day after I’d finished reading the book when I suddenly thought, oh hang on. This connection is really cleverly placed I think, because Healey does it so well that you completely forget about the prologue once you’re deep in the novel.

The slight problem I have is with Frank and the murder. The novel basically ends saying (although not completely conclusively) that Frank killed Sukey. We don’t know quite how and we don’t really know why, which I think is what has annoyed a few readers. The thing that annoys me is that Frank being the murderer seems almost too easy. From the moment you know Sukey is missing, you immediately suspect Frank. And then Healey spends the rest of the novel slowly deconstructing that suspicion you’ve formed, subtly undermining it until you think he can’t possibly have killed her. You come to like Frank, because Maud does, and because he genuinely seems to be pained by Sukey’s death.

And then it turns out that, perhaps in a drunken rage, he did kill her. I felt at first a little cheated, tricked into trying to solve a murder that had been solved all along. But then again, maybe Healey’s done something completely brilliant. Because Frank doesn’t come off as a stereotype nasty husband but as something much more complex. And perhaps the whole book isn’t so much about Maud solving her sister’s murder as it is about her coming to terms with it. Perhaps Healey makes us, like Maud, half always know that Frank did it, but really want it not to be true. It makes for a complex resolution, and I still haven’t made up my mind about whether I think it’s disappointing or utterly perfect.

Overall, I really like Elizabeth is Missing. It’s not only a great mystery story and an engaging read, but an incredibly poignant account of someone suffering from dementia. Its beautifully written and generally well-articulated. I strongly recommend it.

Greatest strength: I think the natural and poignantly written depiction of Maud’s dementia.

Greatest weakness: As I mentioned earlier, the slightly clumsy transitions between present and past.

Let’s finish on a quote: ‘Elizabeth is missing!’ I shout. I shout so the part of my brain that forgets will stop forgetting. ‘Elizabeth is missing!’ I shout it again and again.

Next week: The Veil of Anonymity, by Lauriane Povey

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