I forget things – I know that – but I’m not mad. Not yet. And I’m sick of being treated as if I am. I’m tired of the sympathetic smiles and the little pats people give you when you get things confused, and I’m bloody fed up with everyone deferring to Helen rather than listening to what I have to say.
This is one of those books I really did not want to read. Yes it caused a stir when it was published last year, winning the Costa First Novel Award, and Simon Savidge wrote a rave review in Shiny New Books, but I really didn’t fancy the sound of it. It was the fact that the central character had Alzheimers that put me off, in the same way that a novel in which the central character is drunk or on drugs puts me off. I suppose that sounds feeble in the extreme, and I’m rather ashamed to be admitting it, but there you are. Same with films, but that’s another story. So, anyway, I was away from home recently and had failed to take enough books, so my friend, who had just finished this one, pressed it on me and managed to persuade me by saying it was really a mystery novel. And in a sense, I suppose it is.
I’m sure you don’t need to be told the story, but here goes anyway. The narrator is Maud, in her eighties, still living at home with the aid of a carer, but definitely losing her marbles. She’s just managing to keep going, with frequent visits from her caring but controlling daughter Helen, and by writing herself notes. She makes tea but forgets to drink it, writes shopping lists (Eggs. Milk. Chocolate.) but can’t make sense of them when she gets to the shop and comes home with yet another tin of peaches instead. And over and over again, the notes she writes say ‘Elizabeth is missing’. Elizabeth, her greatest friend, who Maud knows should be at home but isn’t, a fact that causes her great distress, though nobody else takes it seriously.
But, though her memory of everyday things is deteriorating fast, Maud has total recall of her youth, and in particular of the strange and unexplained disappearance of her older sister Sukey when Maud was still in her late teens. Sukey had married Frank, a deeply untrustworthy removal man who dabbled in the black market (for this was wartime) and disappears on unexplained journeys. He also makes up to Maud, who finds him simultanously repellent and tempting. Then there’s Douglas, the young man who lodges at Maud’s, and who seems to have been rather too friendly with Sukey – could he have had something to do with her disappearance? A mystery that was never solved, all this preys on eighty-two year old Maud’s mind more and more.
I have to admit that this is a brilliant book. Emma Healey manages to capture what I can only assume is a totally authentic picture of a crumbling mind – the ebbs and flows, the frustration, the distress, the irritation – and indeed shows how Maud’s memory deteriorates further as the novel progresses, so that towards the end she no longer recognises her daughter and granddaughter, something which distresses her greatly. The novel also brilliantly captures the frustration and guilt Maud's daughter Helen suffers -- she loves her mother but is being driven mad by her at the same time. And through all this there's the mystery of Elizabeth's disappearance, and of Sukey's all those years ago, both of which are finally solved by the end of the novel.
So -- am I glad I read it? Yes, of course. Did I love it? I wouldn't say that, exactly -- for whatever reason, reading about Alzheimers is distressing for me. But my goodness, did I admire it! It's truly a remarkable creation and I will certainly be looking out for whatever Emma Healey does next.
By the way, just spotted the Dutch cover online -- I like it much better than the UK one! What do you think?
