I absolutely loved this book. It is written from the perspective of Maud who is a dementia sufferer. There are certain sights, sounds or smells that bring back memories from her childhood, that ultimately provide the answers she didn’t realise she was searching for. Having a grandmother with dementia, I recognised so many characteristics in Maud, thinking about how her brain would jump from one thing to the next, muddling things up or forgetting all together. I thought this was very very well written. Everyone thought it was just the ramblings of a mad old woman...

A fascinating insight into dementia, I found Maud's fluctuations between confusion and clarity, the past and the present, amazing to experience and felt it added to the drama. It explained a lot about my late mother's behaviour. It was refreshing to read a story from a floating perspective.

The title of Biggest Book of the Year is one that can be and is thrown around a lot. I read this back in January as many people did and I still stand by what I said when I read it all those months ago: this is the Biggest Book of 2015. It was nominated for the Dylan Thomas and the Baileys Prize for Women's Fiction, it won the Costa First Novel Award 2014. It all sounds impressive on paper but all you need to know is you must read it because it’s bloody good. This is Maud, her memory’s not what it used to be. She likes to buy tinned peaches although a note from her daughter and her carer tell her not to. That’s what Maud’s life consists of, notes telling her what not to do, notes to herself, notes tell her that Elizabeth is missing. It’s a little tough to solve a mystery when you can’t remember the clues. This book is a perfect balance between Maud’s new life of notes and her teenage years growing up in London when her older sister also disappears. It makes for a more interesting read when the narrator is unreliable. She’s certainly not lying, but she’s doesn’t know what’s true anymore. One minute she’s certain Elizabeth is fine, the next Elizabeth is missing, dead, cruelly neglected by her son. It also compassionately deals with dementia, the blackly comic moments are honest and raw. Maud’s daughter, Helen, shows a control and patience I envy. It was like nothing I’d read before. It wasn’t like a straight crime novel with the clear cut line between good and evil. It’s not a case of a bad man or woman doing bad things for sinister reasons or a bad childhood. But the story was littered with clues, things with great significance, but as we experience this through Maud, we don’t know what can be trusted. A mystery wrapped in an enigma with the vowels missing, a joke told by someone who doesn’t remember the punchline. It breaks your heart rather than infuriate you. It was a pleasure to be confused by Maud.

Alzheimer's novels are beginning to crowd the bookshelves as Britain faces up to an ageing population and the growth of this vilest of diseases. These books should at the very least be able to offer some window into the lives and minds of dementia sufferers. If they are exceptional they should also manage to entertain us in the process. 'Elizabeth is Missing' is one of those books, and a superb debut novel by Emma Healey to boot. We are given, from a variety of perspectives, the life of Maud, a woman slipping into the gaping maw of forgetfulness and disorientation. She lives alone with her memories in a house that she can no longer cope with despite daily support. She makes too much toast, buys too many tins of peaches and is more at home in the past than the present although she gets no comfort from either. But beneath it all is a strong willed woman coping with impossible circumstances who tries to do the right thing sometimes to the bewilderment of her stressed daughter. Elizabeth, her friend, has gone missing, her home is empty and in the past her sister too has disappeared. This terrific novel, funny and enlightening tries to solve both puzzles which are somehow linked across the decades, even if Maud no longer knows how.