To be honest, while I enjoyed this book a lot it didn’t wow me, and it won’t make my end-of-year highlights. I think it’s a good debut, well written: good, but not great (although I’d say David preferred it more than I did). Elizabeth Is Missing (2019) marks a triumphant return before the cameras for Glenda Jackson, whose last filmed work was done in 1992. Certificate: 12 The Afterword Reading Society: Elizabeth is Missing by Emma Healey Back to video Anna Maria Pellizzari asks Your book is written in the first person, from Elizabeth’s point of view. And additional notes are dotted around Maud’s house, courtesy of her daughter, Helen, and carer, Carla: ‘Maud sets about trying to get to the bottom of Elizabeth’s apparent disappearance, (frustrating her daughter in the process) and this theme forms one of two strands that run through the novel. Dementia is quite a hot topic and certainly an increasing challenge for us to manage.
She lives in her own home, has a carer coming daily to help out, and gets regular visits from her daughter Helen. Maud thinks the same things over and over, says the same things, and forgets where she is moment by moment. Factual drama, based on true cases in the UK, following Ray (a 12-year-old boy) and his experience of the UK legal system that puts him on trial for murder. So many readers appear to have enjoyed it, and I remained engaged throughout the story (despite the minor reservations I mentioned).I enjoyed review and like sound of the book.
I read Faces in the Crowd pre-blog and loved that one, too (Tony Malone reviewed it recently).Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.Wave Me Goodbye: Stories of the Second World War; Civil to Strangers by Barbara Pym.Unauthorised use and/or duplication of this material without written permission from this blog’s author is prohibited. A woman affected by dementia struggles to solve the disappearance of her friend. You must be a registered user to use the IMDb rating plugin. I thought my notes on Emma’s event might be of interest to others, so thank you for saying that.
Dementia seems to be something increasingly explored in recent fiction. It is in the details that Healey shows us what she is trying to get across: it’s all very well … Factually based drama about the true story of Julie Bailey, an ordinary woman from Stafford who blows the whistle on one of the worst scandals in the history of the NHS. Elizabeth Is Missing. She has all the clues because they're all written down on bits of paper. Based on your commentary it seems like she did a superb job of this. Her memory is triggered by objects and music and bits of things that cause to flash back 70 years to the disappearance of her sister. Elizabeth is not at home (Maud has checked) and she feels that Elizabeth’s unfriendly son, Peter Markham is sure to be … There’s some neat period detail and dialogue here, elements that feel true to Britain in the 1940s (as far as I can tell from my experience of novels and films produced at this time).The narrative alternates between Maud’s present-day search for Elizabeth and the post-war years as Maud and her family look for Sukey. While attending an online forensic course, young lab assistant discovers that the fictitious case study has a link to her past. I didn’t see the ending coming although a few others said they did – I’m starting to feel a but thick!Cheers, Naomi, and I love the lines you quoted in your review! At the time of her disappearance, Sukey was relatively newly-married to Frank, a rather shady removals operator with a lucrative sideline in the movement of black-market goods.Despite Maud’s difficulty in remembering things from the present day, her long-term memory is much sharper, considerably more vivid, and the story moves back in time as Maud recalls the events surrounding Sukey’s vanishing. In my opinion, attempting to convey such experiences, is one of the primary reasons for writing as well as reading.Thank you, Brian. I have heard nothing but good things of it though, so should perhaps try it. Yes, Claire, it’s a very good debut, and it’ll be interesting to see what she writes next. If I considered the book amazing, I’d say it might be worth the angst of giving it a go…but I didn’t love it. Elizabeth Is Missing is the first novel by British author, Emma Healey. In this darkly riveting debut novel, a woman descending into dementia refuses to accept that her elderly best friend Elizabeth has simply disappeared --- and, as her mind retreats to a frightening place where the past and present collide, she embarks on a desperate quest for the truth that will have shattering consequences.