Elizabeth Is Missing is Emma Healey’s first novel about an older woman suffering from dementia. The story is from Maud’s point of view and gives the audience an idea of what life might be like to have one’s mind slowly deteriorate due to dementia. To help illustrate the point even more, Maud spends most of her time obsessing about the disappearance of her friend, Elizabeth. She finds it extremely difficult to follow the clues when she can’t remember what the clues are or even what they mean when she finds them.
There is very little background information about this book and its author, Emma Healey. Emma Healey finished her master’s in England in 2011 and published her first novel, Elizabeth Is Missing, in 2014. I learned that due to the death and decline of her own grandmothers that Emma was inspired to write about dementia in fiction. When I mentioned this book to others, no one had heard of it, instead everyone referred to the book Still Alice, which was made into a movie last year and starred Julianne Moore. While I have not read the book or seen the movie, I have read that Still Alice is also the first person perspective of someone in a decline due to dementia, specifically Alzheimer’s Disease. Because I enjoyed Elizabeth Is Missing, I might see if I can get my hands on Still Alice as well.
I feel like this book especially appealed to me because my own grandmother suffered from Alzheimer’s, and so I already understood what it was like to be a family member of someone with dementia. What captivated me about this book is that it gave me some insight into what my grandmother might have been feeling. The confusion that becomes second nature to someone with dementia is heart breaking. To think that someone with my mental capacity today could get to the point where someone doesn’t remember what they were doing only five minutes before or even the faces of her own children is frightening. I would like to say that the novel gave me a greater compassion and apathy for people suffering from dementia. The novel also has caused me to ponder what I would do if I were Maud’s daughter, Helen. My first reaction is that Maud is a person who plain and simple needs to be in 24-hour care for her own safety. While at the beginning of the novel, Maud doesn’t seem so badly off, as the story progresses, her dementia progresses and it is apparent that she can no longer be trusted to take care of herself. Through interactions between Maud and her daughter, it is apparent that making the decision to have your mother live in a nursing care facility is neither plain nor simple.
Mimi Baird embarks on a journey to learn why her father, Dr. Perry Baird quite literally disappeared from his daughter’s life in the mid-1940s. Dr. Baird was, by all accounts, a brilliant doctor and an up-and-coming researcher whose groundbreaking study into manic depression was abruptly halted due to his own suffering with the disease. Dr. Baird had been removed from his family while Mimi and her younger sister were quite young; the girls were not given a complete explanation as to what happened to their father for several decades. While Mimi attempted to readjust to a life without her father and the mystery surrounding him, Dr. Baird was institutionalized multiple times due to his uncontrollable manic depression. During his many hospitalizations, Dr. Baird kept a written account of his personal experiences with his disease, the treatments he endured which are now considered barbaric, and mourned the loss of every aspect of his life.
Summary: If you know you want to explore more about theology and the bible but are not sure where to start, this is a good place.
Summary: Inspector Gamache and his wife go away to their favorite vacation spot for their 35th anniversary, murder follows them.
Summary: When a group from Three Pines decides to have a séance to purge the evil spirits of the Hadley house, one of the participants appears to die of fright.
Summary: A history and guide to early church theologians, pastors and writers.
The 1950s were a dark time for the American cook, although she may not have realized it at the time. World War II introduced new food technologies such as freezing methods, preservation and dehydrating, all in the name of the war effort. After the war ended, food manufacturers needed to convince the American consumer to continue on with the new traditions from frozen TV dinners to the meat product called Spam. Cookbooks followed suit with such popular titles as “œCookbook for Frozen Foods” and The Can Opener Cookbook”. Convenience and elaborate presentation were all the rage, as well as some unusual pairings as this photo from my grandmother’s 1970 “œJoy of Jell-O” cookbook depicts. 