Elizabeth Is Missing is basically Memento, if Guy Pearce were a confused old woman. I imagine many Guy Pearce films could be improved by this minor tweak. It has all the elements – mystery, memory blocks and crime. And also a surprisingly large number of references to toast.
The central premise is that the main character, Maud, is trying to track down her missing friend Elizabeth (the title of the book being somewhat on-the-nose) while she bashes up against against the seemingly-insurmountable obstacle of her own deteriorating memory.
But that doesn’t necessarily do justice to this. The way Maud’s memories dart in and out, surfacing some details and losing others, is an elegant patchwork, and gives the reader the gradual unravelling of the story even as Maud fails to hang onto it. And there’s a whole other story tied into this, as her efforts to discover her friend’s whereabouts increasingly mirror an unsolved mystery from much earlier in her life – the disappearance of Maud’s sister, Sukey.
All this is set against a very humane depiction of dementia. The exact strand she suffers from is never quite spelled out, but the symptoms are very similar to those of Alzheimer’s. We see the frustrations her family and community feel when dealing with her regularly repeating herself, or exhibiting strange behaviour – and that’s believable and sad – but we also see what Maud’s own experience is like, from a first-person perspective, which is relatively uncovered in literature. We see how people refuse to take her seriously, and treat her like a child, the more confused she gets. This isn’t black-and-white though – it’s also clear that the measures they take and the way they talk to her are developed with her best interests in mind. It’s a dynamic that thousands of people must enter into all the time, but which is very rarely written about from both angles.
One inevitable danger with this premise is that, as the reader, you also end up treading the same ground many times over, and this can get a little wearing. But there’s enough plot, humour and pace to help manage you through these parts. There’s also the deterioration of Maud’s mind over time, which splits the fragments apart into even smaller chunks and creates quite a vivid depiction of Maud’s crumbling mind. It feels like watching a house fall apart when you’re inside it.
This was another audiobook purchase for me, and I really recommend it. The narrator, Anna Bentinck, does a brilliant job, capturing both Old Maud and Young Maud fantastically. But I’m sure the good old paper-‘n’-ink one does a splendid job too.
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