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Saturday 20 June 2015

Elizabeth is Missing - Emma Healey



Meet Maud...

Maud is forgetful. She makes a cup of tea and doesn't remember to drink it. She goes to the shop and forgets why she went. Sometimes her home is unrecognizable - or her daughter Helen seems a total stranger.

But there's one thing Maud is sure of: her friend Elizabeth is missing. The note in her pocket tells her so. And no matter who tells her to stop going on about it, to leave it alone, to shut up, Maud will get to the bottom of it.

Because somewhere in Maud's damaged mind lies the answer to an unsolved seventy-year-old mystery. One everyone has forgotten about.

Everyone except Maud.....


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Elizabeth is Missing is Emma Healey's debut novel about an elderly lady, Maud Horsham, who is convinced that her friend Elizabeth is missing.  She has been round to her house, left notes through the door and still there has been no word from Elizabeth.  As Maud seems to have dementia, although that never seems to be confirmed in the book, nobody believes her but Maud is convinced that this is the case she has a note in her pocket that tells her so.  In amongst all the confusion in Maud's life one fact remains that when she was a young girl her beloved sister Sukey (real name Susan) did go missing never to be found and in trying to solve the mystery around the disappearance of Elizabeth a seventy year old mystery is about to be solved.

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I think I must be losing my mojo at the moment. Possibly because life in general is a bit like that hamster on a wheel.  Elizabeth is Missing was definitely a very good novel especially as a debut novel but, I sort of lost the thread of it along the way and then all of a sudden you arrive at the last few chapters and all becomes clearer. Now that could have been the writers intention but for some they may have given up before they got to that point.  There seems to be a lot of us picking this one to read at the moment so it will be interesting to see what everyone else thinks,

Meanwhile I have started my next book, another popular choice around blog land. A colleague of mine told me about Laline Paull's The Bees a while ago but I just hadn't got around to reading it.
As I still wake up at stupid O'Clock on a Saturday morning and then can't get back to sleep I tend to get up and make a cuppa and read, which is exactly what I have done this morning and I am already at Chapter Six and so far I am really enjoying it so who knows may be this is the one to get the mojo back.


Happy reading one & all

Mx

6 comments:

  1. Early morning is the time I try and do some reading although my eyes are blurry and, therefore, I'm really slow and easily distracted unless I can get absorbed in the writing. I reserved Elizabeth is Missing from the local library, but I'm 40th in the queue! I'm glad you're enjoying The Bees.

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    1. I tend to read first thing before galvanising myself into getting ready for work. There is usually an opportunity at some point during the day and then I read before I go to sleep. A 400 page book can take me anything from three days to a week depending on how much I am liking the book and whether I can put it down or not. I am just a little over halfway through The Bees now and it has been very good a bit like a Watership down for adults.

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  2. We read Elizabeth is Missing for our book club and I'm afraid I didn't enjoy it, I ended up skim reading it. I too like reading early in the morning, with a cup of tea in bed!
    Caz xx

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    1. Early morning reading with a cuppa you just can't beat it. It's the best time before the rest of the house wakes up and probably one of the only times you get no interruptions. I think there were moments that I skimmed rather than absorbed with this one.

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  3. We read Elizabeth is Missing for our book club and I'm afraid I didn't enjoy it, I ended up skim reading it. I too like reading early in the morning, with a cup of tea in bed!
    Caz xx

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  4. I enjoyed Elizabeth is Missing. I think it showed how frightening this condition can be. I read it a while ago and at the moment I am reading another book about Alzheimer's - Still Alice - which is much more medical.

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