The hype surrounding the novel almost gathered as much attention as the novel itself. Before it was even published it was at the epicentre of a bidding war with nine publishers, and now the TV rights to the book have been sold.
You’ll be hard pressed not to enjoy this book. The minute you step into the mind of the central protagonist, Maud an 80 something geriatric suffering the onset of Alzheimer’s, you find yourself locked in a fragmented thriller, told through Maud’s unreliable memory and grasp on reality.
The intrigue begins when Maud visits her friend Elizabeth and notices the remains of a compact mirror in the garden, one which she is convinced she recognises from 70 years before. She’s not sure why but she has the feeling that the mirror is important somehow. The problem is, Maud can’t remember what happened back then or why. What’s more, since she saw Elizabeth that day she hasn’t seen her again, and she becomes convinced she is missing. Elizabeth is Maud’s only remaining friend, and she becomes obsessed by her whereabouts.
The narrative jumps between the present day and Maud’s younger years in the post-war era, when her elder sister Sukey went missing. The dual mysteries run alongside one another, hindered and confused by Maud’s inability to remember anything that happened that day or that hour, let alone decades before. The interlinking narrative might even suggest deeper psychological issues at stake: that Maud is repressing one of the stories as she is unable to deal with the other.
Healey’s manipulation of language is notably impressive: the story slips into the past and present in the way that memories and thoughts transition unfiltered through our minds. Despite her confusion, Maud’s senility allows her to describe certain seemingly irrelevant details with enormous intricacy and elaborateness: “A long breath, pulled deep into my lungs, leaves me with the raw wet taste of the bruised earth. My knees shift, nestled into the sodden ground, and the fabric of my trousers slowly draws moisture up my legs.”
Healey seems to be forging the way for a new genre, a melange of crime and literary fiction, comparable perhaps to Kate Atkinson’s Case Histories. What makes this novel unique is that it not only combines several genres but also includes two main themes: what it is to experience dementia, and a gripping detective story.
As a reader the frustration with the novel lies in what is also its greatest charm: Maud’s memory. Presumably other characters in the novel repeatedly tell Maud where Elizabeth is, but she forgets, and also forgets to relay to the reader. One has the impression when reading the book that Maud does have a feeling she knows what has happened to Elizabeth. Whilst this starts off as a gripping hook, by the end of the book the memory loss becomes less thrilling and repetitive at points.
Ultimately the novel is not only a thriller but also examines themes of human interest surrounding life and love. The book succeeds in being moving without being depressing. Amidst the mad disjointed logic, there lies a lot of sense.
