Elizabeth is Missing by Emma Healey

This book was the winner of the 2014 Costa First Novel Award.  One of the descriptions on the inside cover of the book portrays it as a dark psychological thriller, but I would say it is a story about relationships and loss.  Maud Horsham is eighty-two and suffering from dementia.  She knows she forgets things, but one thing she is certain of is her friend Elizabeth is missing.  No matter who she tells, no one seems to believe her.  As she goes on her quest to find Elizabeth her present gets tangled up with her past.  As the book progresses she is living more and more in the past in a time just after the war when her older sister Sukey disappeared.  Maud’s daughter Helen tries her best to care for her mother and the reader feels Helen’s helplessness, sorrow and guilty irritation.   We see how frightened Maud gets when she forgets things or goes wandering and doesn’t recognise her surroundings.  We see her confusion, mixed with relief, when she finds notes she has written to herself to record the things she is trying to hold on to before the memory slips away.  The author describes all these things convincingly.   I feared it would be a depressing read and it was sad in parts, but also darkly comic.  A thought provoking read.