Elizabeth is Missing by Emma Healey

The world is raving about Elizabeth is Missing and for good reason too. It's the debut work of Emma Healey, ginger, 29 and 'a pale-faced, slightly distressed looking author' ~ The Times. It is good, well the 9% of it that I read anyway. It just didnt take me in and hold me.

Maude has dementia, Alzheimer’s or some other such illness and Healy does great to portray the struggles that this condition holds on its quarry. Maude cannot remember what she did yesterday and in some cases what she just did or said minutes ago. It’s frustrating for her, her carers and her daughter (who visits her daily, mostly to find cans of peaches everywhere).

Maude cannot contact her friend Elizabeth and suspects foul play is at hand. She asks everyone she can, constantly. There is a lot of this repetitiveness in the story because it is the condition that plagues Maude. We are also made aware of something that happened to Maude’s sister some 70 years ago. This is where it gets a bit too unreal for me. Maude can remember this part of her life in detail but nothing else. She cannot remember if she bought tins of peaches but knows exactly where her friend Elizabeth lives and how to get there. The inconsistences I believe was the reason I didn’t persist with the book. If she has memory loss then she has memory loss and the narrator cannot have total recall of events, places and situations to justify the story. The story cannot be written because the story cannot be remembered. Maude is the narrator not someone outside looking in.

Here Are The Young Men by Rob Doyle

Here Are The Young Men was the type of book I had been waiting on for a long time. A contemporary new voice from Dublin. Imagine my surprise then when it was such a disappointment.

The Leaving Cert exams have finished and five friends are on the tear. Matthew, Rez, Kearney, Cocker and Jen. Our famous five are from Dublin Southside so you can gather money is never a worry for them. They are able to source copious amounts of drink and drugs without any problems and they do. I thought with the Matthew or Rex character we were going to have an Irish Holden Caulfield. Someone rich, at a loss end and a character you couldn't give a fuck about. We did get that but rather than one character you got five you really didn't care about. When I say five I mean three. For Cocker starts as a main character but it would appear that having 4 of the same twats in the book was even too much for the author to deal with. The character of Jen is worse. Such a stereotypical female character. There for the love interest and nothing else. Really bad to introduce such a single dimensional character. How this passed the editor I cannot say.

Anyway on with the book.

It started off fine. The three up to all sorts of shenanigans taking their drugs and drink to access. Matthew, the most stable, Rez the intellectual and Kearney the loose cannon. Through visits to beaches and hills around Dublin south side they drink, smoke, pontificate, take drugs and then take more drugs. This continues up until Rez doesn’t try to kill himself and Kearney heads off to Boston for a few weeks (money no object) to his brother and his eyes get opened to new violent ways. When they all back everything goes wrong. I don’t want to go into it too much. There is lots of viciousness in the story that you can find out for yourself if you want.

Doyle has a real grasp and understating on drug use and the effects. One of the finer points of the book. Maybe this is Doyle’s Dublin when the Celtic Tiger was in full roar. If it is then I am glad I wasn’t there at the time.

If you like you violence ultra and you don’t get attached to characters then this could be for you. If not then this book isn’t for you.

2/5