“But it’s not true. I forget things—I know that—but I’m not mad. Not yet. And I’m sick of being treated as if I am.”
Not your conventional crime thriller this novel, though it has an aura of an underlying mystery throughout. Elizabeth is Missing is a unique yet a simple story of the strong bonds between family and friendships and persistence.
Old age has its own shortcomings, adding dementia to the mix does not make it easier; and neither is it a picture perfect life for our 82 year protagonist old Maud. Not completely lucid in the present day, her memories keep intertwining with the past. To her childhood, her time spent with her family, to the time her sister Sukey went missing.
Now 70 years later, one day Maud on her knees, discovering random objects buried with her friend dear Elizabeth, and the next day, Elizabeth is nowhere to be found. Maud not having heard from her friend for a quite sometime now, starts her own unsettling journey looking for Elizabeth.
She keeps small notes in her pocket with the timestamps on the many occasions she has tried looking for Elizabeth but has always found herself facing the wall at a dead end. Maud is mocked, laughed at for being the old delusional lady looking for a missing person. But she is adamant on staying unaffected by it all and concentrates on finding her friend, also maybe because she doesn’t remember the ridicules.
The story is narrated through Maud’s point of view, which made it a little hard to read through her mind because her confusion, anxiety, fear and the helplessness is captured and written so intricately that you can’t help feeling helpless with her.
Emma’s simple style of writing keeps you grasped in enough to keep turning the page.Elizabeth is Missing, though seems like a short and easy read, had its drops as the story drags a bit in between but picks up in the 2nd half as the layers of the two mysteries start to unravel in parallel. Leading to its very unexpected haunting end.