Elizabeth Is Missing - Hardcover

Healey, Emma

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0345808304 ISBN 13: 9780345808301

Publisher: Knopf Canada, 2014

Synopsis

WINNER 2014 – Costa Book Awards—First Novel 

An internationally heralded debut novel of extraordinary warmth, insight and humanity that will appeal to readers who loved The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry and Still Alice: Elizabeth Is Missing is at once a page-turning mystery that takes us from post-war Britain to the present day and a piercingly honest portrait of love and memory, families and aging through the lens of an unforgettable protagonist who will seize your heart--an elderly woman descending into forgetfulness, as she embarks alone on a quest to find the best friend she believes has disappeared.
     Maud, an aging grandmother, is slowly losing her memory--and her grip on everyday life. Notes fill her pockets and dot the walls of her home, increasingly crucial reminders of the immediate world. Most crucial is the fact that she can't find her only friend--Elizabeth has disappeared: she isn't answering the phone and doesn't seem to be at her house. Maud, convinced Elizabeth is in terrible danger, refuses to forget her even if her frustrated daughter, Helen, her carer, Carla, and the police won't listen and won't help. Armed with an overwhelming feeling that Elizabeth desperately needs her help, Maud sets out to find her. And, unexpectedly, her search triggers an old and powerful memory of another unsolved disappearance--that of her sister, Sukey, who vanished more than 50 years ago, shortly after the Second World War.
     As long-ago memories emerge, Maud begins to uncover forgotten clues to her sister's disappearance and to piece together the mystery that has haunted her family for decades, discovering new momentum in her search for her friend. Could the mystery of Sukey's disappearance hold the key to finding Elizabeth?

About this title

About the Author

EMMA HEALEY grew up and still lives in London where she completed her first degree in bookbinding (learning how to put books together but not how to write them), which she followed with an MA in Creative Writing in 2011. Elizabeth Is Missing is her first novel. The author lives in London, England.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Prologue

‘Maud? Was I boring you so much that you’d rather stand outside in the dark?’

A woman calls to me from the warm light of a cluttered dining room. My breath curls towards her, wet and ghostly, but no words follow. The snow, sparse but bright on the ground, reflects the light on to her face, which is drawn tight in an attempt to see. I know, though, that she can’t see very well, even in the daylight.

‘Come inside,’ she says. ‘It’s freezing. I promise I won’t say another word about frogs and snails and majolica ware.’

‘I wasn’t bored,’ I say, realizing too late that she’s joking. ‘I’ll be there in a minute. I’m just looking for something.’ In my hand is the thing I’ve already found, still clotted with mud. A small thing, easily missed. The broken lid of an old compact, its silver tarnished, its navy-blue enamel no longer glassy but scratched and dull. The mildewed mirror is like a window on a faded world, like a porthole looking out under the ocean. It makes me squirm with memories.

‘What have you lost?’ The woman steps, precarious and trembling, out on to the patio. ‘Can I help? I might not be able to see it, but I can probably manage to trip over it if it’s not too
well hidden.’

I smile, but I don’t move from the grass. Snow has collected on the ridges of a shoeprint and it looks like a tiny dinosaur fossil freshly uncovered. I clutch at the compact lid in my hand, soil tightening my skin as it dries. I’ve missed this tiny thing for nearly seventy years. And now the earth, made sludgy and chewable with the melting snow, has spat out a relic. Spat it
into my hand. But where from? That’s what I can’t discover. Where did it lie before it became the gristle in the earth’s meal?

An ancient noise, like a fox bark, makes an attempt at the edges of my brain. ‘Elizabeth?’ I ask. ‘Did you ever grow marrows?’

Edition details

• Publisher: Knopf Canada
• Publication date: 2014
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0345808304
• ISBN 13: 9780345808301
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 288