This debut novel comes garlanded with the heavy weight of both expectation and recommendation. Deborah Moggach: "I read it at a gulp." Emma Donoghue: "Elizabeth Is Missing will stir and shake you." Jonathan Coe: "One of those semi-mythical beasts, the book you cannot put down." It was the subject of a bidding war between nine publishers, the TV rights have already been sold and you can almost hear the calls being placed to Dame Judi and/or Dame Maggie.
All this predisposed me to dislike it. Sadly, this was not possible. It's a very good novel and highly impressive for a debut. It's a rare imagining of a character pushing 90 years of age who has either severe Alzheimer's or just everyday senility (we never quite know) and there is something pleasing – I'm sure, especially to television companies – about an elderly female protagonist, even if she is highly unreliable and constantly repeating herself.
In the short prologue, Maud, the narrator-heroine, has just discovered the remains of a compact mirror she recognises from 70 years ago in her friend's garden. This is a tantalising glimpse of the twin mysteries to come. What happened 70 years ago and why has Maud forgotten it? And what has happened to Maud's friend from the garden, Elizabeth, who has, according to Maud at least, gone missing?
Maud's attempts to ascertain Elizabeth's whereabouts are hampered by the fact that she cannot remember what happened a few seconds ago, let alone whether she actually saw Elizabeth last week or even last year. Her visits to Elizabeth's house (when she remembers that is where she set out to go) don't help: Elizabeth is not there but somehow she doesn't seem to be not there either.
Maud spends a great deal of her time trapped in her house, which she is dissuaded from leaving for her own safety. Although often she forgets this and goes to the corner shop to buy peach slices – again. (Not that that was what she went in for.) On a daily basis Maud's long-suffering daughter Helen and various carers pop into the house. Maud has very little idea where they came from, when they arrived or how long they have been there. She writes herself notes: "No more peach slices." "Elizabeth is missing." But the notes seem to make things worse not better.
The narrative flits between the present day and Maud's digressions into the postwar period, when her newly married sister, Sukey, went missing. These passages come alive with detail and life: Maud does not struggle to remember anything when she is transported back in time in her own mind. Sukie, older than Maud by a few years, has recently married Frank, who is not the most trustworthy of sorts and deals in black-market goods. When Sukie disappears in the mess and confusion of postwar London, Frank falls briefly under suspicion. But Douglas, Maud's family's lodger, also seems to know more than he's telling. And what about the terrifying madwoman who lives rough on Sukie's street? Did she see something?
Healey has a wonderful feel for language, and Elizabeth's state of mind allows her to describe mundane details with intricacy and emotional depth, as if seen through a magnifying glass: "A long breath, pulled deep into my lungs, leaves me with the raw wet taste of the bruised earth. My knees shift, nestled into the sodden ground, and the fabric of my trousers slowly draws moisture up my legs."
Most of all, though, this book is an interesting exercise in genre, comparable to Kate Atkinson's Case Histories, not quite crime, not quite literary fiction, a "hybrid" work. (And every publisher's dream because the market possibilities are doubled.) There were echoes here for me of Catherine O'Flynn's work: very English, quirky, understated, a sense of humour bubbling beneath an almost surreal suburban surface. The publishers will have thought "Maggie O'Farrell meets Gone Girl" and rejoiced.
The drawback for me as a reader was the device that holds the whole thing together: Maud's lack of memory. At any point anyone is able to tell her what has happened to Elizabeth (and, as you can guess, there are only a couple of options). Perhaps they do tell her, but she forgets to tell us, the reader. Or, as the novel seems to suggest, she does know but in her confused state she can't keep the information in her mind. I eventually found this device frustrating rather than thrilling.
There's a suggestion of psychological interplay between the "Elizabeth" information in Maud's brain and the "what happened 70 years ago" information. Perhaps she is suppressing one because she cannot face the other. There's a lot here to praise, admire and enjoy. But ultimately this is a novel for readers who love unreliable narrators instead of being infuriated by them.
