Maud was 82 years old and Maud was losing her memories. And she was losing them fast.
She found her world becoming more and more unfamiliar day by day. She found herself suddenly standing in the middle of a garden but could not remember what she had been digging. She could not recognise her streets because they looked so different from how she remembered them in the 40s, when she was still a teenage girl. There was a woman. A middled aged, tired and constantly irritated woman who claimed to her daughter and who was always angry with her. More and more Maud started to do things that were completely meaningless to others, or, it was this very world that has been losing its meaning to her. Nevertheless, at the back of her head there was something that would not go away. A gut feeling maybe?
Someone was missing.
Maud was 82 years old and Maud was losing her memories. And she was losing them fast.
She found her world becoming more and more unfamiliar day by day. She found herself suddenly standing in the middle of a garden but could not remember what she had been digging. She could not recognise her streets because they looked so different from how she remembered them in the 40s, when she was still a teenage girl. There was a woman. A middled aged, tired and constantly irritated woman who claimed to be her daughter and who was always angry with her. More and more Maud started to do things that were completely meaningless to others, or, it was this very world that has been losing its meaning to her. Nevertheless, at the back of her head there was something that would not go away. A gut feeling maybe?
Someone was missing.
Her neighbour and good friend Elizabeth was missing. Or, was it her sister Sukey?
But how could she solve a crime when she could not even remember what had happened 15 minutes ago? How could she explain herself when no one around believed in her?
Emma Healey's first novel Elizabeth is Missing is a story one finds it hard to categorise. It does not feel like a crime story. But then there are hints of crime everywhere. And it ends like a crime story. The storyteller is Maud Horsham, an old lady who suffered from Alzheimer's. Her understanding of the present world was fragmented. On the other hand, she could still remember the times when her sister went missing. Those memories were so clear that they kept surfacing, interrupting and sometimes even taking over her present day life. And readers are invited to solve the mysteries of the missing girls between these two intertwined worlds.
It was year 1946. Britain had just survived a war but was still enduring its aftermath. Houses bombed into rubbles and families were living on rationed food. "My" sister Sukey had married a mysterious man called Frank. He traded furniture. Apparently he also ran some dodgy sidelines. No one could tell what he actually did. He just had a gift in bringing in with extra food from the black market. "Our" righteous father had never approved of him. One day both he and my sister disappeared. Perhaps they ran away together? But then Frank came back and my sister did not. She never returned...
This was all we had left of her. I wanted to curl up in the case and shut the lid, not take everything out and wash her away.
Almost 70 years has passed. This time it was Elizabeth. "I" always remembered Elizabeth's house because of the pebbles on her walls. She was a nice friend but she had a good-for-nothing son, who never bothered to hide his hostility to others and who must be scheming something behind his mother's back...
The narration, following "my" memories, flows from one world to another, back and forth, back and forth... smooth like fluid. From the charmless jumper in a department store "I" went back to Sukey, "my" sister, moving about the house in her stylish dresses. From the musty smell of the old cloths in Oxfam I went back to the day we discovered Sukey's suitcase, packed with underwear, knickers, blouses... once beautiful, but now crumpled and sour-smelling. They had lost their shine just like their owner had abandoned her life.
As the narration continues to flow between the two worlds, readers are offered bits and pieces of hints to the final answer of the mysteries. It was a real pleasure collecting these hints. It felt a bit like children looking for beautiful shells in the beach and collecting them. And gradually readers could construct the whole picture themselves. There are mysteries which work hard on not letting readers know too much so as to maximise their final impact. For Elizabeth is Missing, it is the process that is intriguing, not the finale. It is about enjoying the read, rather than rushing to the last page to know who the killer is.
The writing in Elizabeth is Missing is also successful in conveying the atmosphere of these two parallel worlds.
The 1940 Britain was nostalgically vivid. The music from the gramophone, the smell of stewed apple, that particular red used in Sukey's lipstick, the shadows that moved across the dance hall. It could not have been an easy time. But through Emma Healey's writing it almost felt like we were back to that good old England.
The current one was sad and fast disintegrating. As each chapter goes by, we can tell Maud's Alzheimer's is setting in quicker and quicker. It is a future that will be faced by everyone who is lucky enough to live till such old age. Our once-young-and-energetic bodies would depreciate in an unstoppable pace. Those most precious memories, the faces of our most beloved ones, would be forever lost to us. Elizabeth might be gone but her stairlift still functioned. "I" pressed the remote by mistake and then the empty chair slowly climbed up to "me", its mechanical, whirring sound echoed around the deserted house like a protesting groan of a forgotten ghost.
There is one thing I found odd in this story though. I found these two worlds being too neatly divided. The transition between the two times was interesting at first but has gradually become quite a standard formula. Also, Maud almost always went back to one period in her past only. 82 years is a long time to live. There must be quite a lot of precious moments one could gather such a span of time. Those times Maud shared with her husband, those times when her children did something formidable or unforgivable, those times when she worked or danced or had other romantic encounters, those bits and pieces that made up one person's life... if all these fragments could also dart in and out of the two major timelines, I believe the storytelling could be even more realistic and intriguing.
The final moment of revelation was also rather abrupt, with Maud's mind suddenly became clear. She was even able to give quite a logical account to the police officer.
Nevertheless, Elizabeth is Missing was an unconventional crime story and definitely an enjoyable read. The effect it gives is not an ultimate shock but a lingering sadness, with a touch of mystery.