Elizabeth is Missing - Softcover

Healey, Emma

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0241003512 ISBN 13: 9780241003510

Publisher: Viking, 2014

Synopsis

'Elizabeth is missing', reads the note in Maud's pocket in her own handwriting.

Lately, Maud's been getting forgetful. She keeps buying peach slices when she has a cupboard full, forgets to drink the cups of tea she's made and writes notes to remind herself of things. But Maud is determined to discover what has happened to her friend, Elizabeth, and what it has to do with the unsolved disappearance of her sister Sukey, years back, just after the war.

A fast-paced mystery with a wonderful leading character: Maud will make you laugh and cry, but she certainly won't be forgotten.

About this title

Review:

The novel is both a gripping detective yarn and a haunting depiction of mental illness, but also more poignant and blackly comic than you might expect from that description... perhaps Healey's greatest achievement is the flawless voice she creates for Maud. (The Observer)

A compelling mystery that capture the experience of Maud, a highly memorable elderly woman losing her memory (Sunday Express)

A thrillingly assured, haunting and unsettling novel, I read it at a gulp (Deborah Moggach)

One of those semi-mythical beasts, the book you cannot put down (Jonathan Coe)

Already being tipped for literary stardom. At the London Book Fair last April, nine publishers fought for her debut, Elizabeth is Missing... a tale of dementia, its TV rights have already been sold (Evening Standard's Fourteen in 2014)

Memory - or the lack of it - continues to be a big theme in fiction. The manuscript of this debut mystery narrated by an 81 year old who can't quite remember what she's investigating created a buzz at the London book fair in 2013 (Guardian's 2014 Books)

Elizabeth is Missing will stir and shake you: an investigation into a seventy-year-old crime, through the eyes of the most likeably unreliable of narrators. But the real mystery at its compassionate core is the fragmentation of the human mind. (Emma Donoghue, award-winning author of Room)

From the Back Cover:

In this darkly riveting debut novel, a sophisticated psychological mystery, one woman will stop at nothing to fiFInd her best friend, who seems to have gone missing. . . .

Despite Maud's growing anxiety about Elizabeth's welfare, no one takes her concerns seriously--not her frustrated daughter, not her caretakers, not the police, and especially not Elizabeth's mercurial son--because Maud suffers from dementia. But even as her memory disintegrates and she becomes increasingly dependent on the trail of handwritten notes she leaves for herself in her pockets and around her house, Maud cannot forget her best friend. Armed with only an overwhelming feeling that Elizabeth needs her help, Maud resolves to discover the truth--no matter what it takes.

As this singular obsession forms a cornerstone of Maud's rapidly dissolving present, the clues she uncovers lead her deeper into her past, to another unsolved disappearance: that of her sister, Sukey, who vanished shortly after World War II. As vivid memories of a tragedy that occurred more than fifty years ago come flooding back, Maud's search for Elizabeth develops a frantic momentum. Whom can she trust? Can she trust herself?

A page-turning novel of suspense, Elizabeth Is Missing also hauntingly reminds us that we are all at the mercy of our memory. Always compelling, often poignant, and at times even blackly witty, this is an absolutely unforgettable novel.

About this edition

• Publisher: Viking
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0241003512
• ISBN 13: 9780241003510
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288