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Runner-up for the Betty Trask Award 2015.
Winner of the Costa First Novel Award 2014.
One of the Top 10 books in the Lovereading Readers’ Choice Book of the Year 2014.
One of our Books of the Year 2014.
Eighty-something Maud is getting forgetful and so writes notes to herself. ‘Elizabeth is missing’ is one such note which Maud then becomes obsessed with for Elizabeth is indeed missing. She tells her daughter, the police, anyone who will listen. Maud is suffering from dementia which gets gradually worse throughout the book. Her daughter has to eventually take her in … and still, for Maud at least, Elizabeth is missing. For us, the reader too, only we do discover why. Slowly we get Maud’s back story and a strange mystery about her sister and her very dodgy husband. All becomes clear in a startling conclusion. The stages of dementia are thoroughly explored in a thoughtful, impressive manner. A fascinating debut.
The Costa Judges said Healey's book was “Utterly captivating and original.”
June 2014 MEGA Debut of the Month.
Elizabeth is Missing, Emma Healey's debut novel, introduces a mystery, an unsolved crime and one of the most unforgettable characters since Mark Haddon's Christopher. Meet Maud ...'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.
In addition to our Lovereading expert opinion some of our Lovereading Reader Review Panel were also lucky enough to read and review this title.
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
ISBN: 9780241968185
Publication date: 01/01/2015
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 9780241003503
Publication date: 05/06/2014
Publisher: Viking an imprint of Penguin Books Ltd
Format: Hardback
| ISBN: | 9780241003503 |
| Publication date: | 5th June 2014 |
| Author: | Emma Healey |
| Publisher: | Viking an imprint of Penguin Books Ltd |
| Format: | Hardback |
| Pagination: | 288 pages |
| Genres: | Reader Reviewed Books, eBook Favourites, Family Drama, Literary Fiction, Reading Groups, |
| Categories: | Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945), |
Emma Healey grew up in London where she completed her first degree in bookbinding (learning how to put books together but not how to write them). She graduated from the MA in Creative Writing: Prose at UEA in 2011. Elizabeth is Missing is her first novel and was published in June 2014.
More About Emma Healey
