This book was the first chosen to be read for a newly-formed book club. Had I not been reading it for that purpose, I would not have stayed with it, as I found it both painful and depressing.
Maud, a woman in her early 80s, living in a working-class English town, is moving ever deeper into dementia. Her memory is muddled and she is often confused. She frequently repeats herself, or seems to speak out of context about unrelated details, and asks the same questions over and over, of her daughter, Helen, her granddaughter Katy, and the various "carers" who come to her home on a regular basis.
Maud does not know, or doesn't remember, what has happened to her best friend Elizabeth, and is worried that she is injured, hurt, or the victim of a crime. She goes to Elizabeth's home, repeatedly calls the police about her, and even takes out a missing person ad in the local newspaper, aggravating Peter, Elizabeth's hostile son. She asks Helen about Elizabeth in nearly every conversation.
I found it shocking that Maud was living alone, even with frequent visits from her daughter, and with her "carers" who make her lunch, and do other things around her home. There are notes and signs put up around the house as reminders, but Maud doesn't grasp their meaning, or remember them. To help herself, she writes her own notes, which she stuffs in her pockets, but then forgets that they are there or what they mean.
Helen, who seems overwhelmed by her circumstances, has clearly not realized or doesn't want to accept that Maud's condition has deteriorated to the point that she should not be alone at all. Eventually this is rectified but handled very gracelessly – Helen sells Maud's house without her truly grasping what is happening, then moves her into her home.
There is another person missing in this story: Sukey (a nickname for Susan), Maud's beloved older sister, who disappeared shortly after World War II when Maud was just a young teenager. Her whereabouts were never resolved. Given that Maud's family lived throughout the bombings of World War II, and the deprivations that followed, it seems likely to me that some of Maud's difficulties are also the long-term result of PTSD – when Sukey did not reappear, Maud was sick in bed for a long time with what seems to have been a physical condition brought on by depression. There are also references to circumstances later, when as a wife and mother, Maud seemed unable to cope.
Having grown up in a family where there were both mental illness and memory loss in those close to me, I found this book quite horrifying. I felt tremendous sympathy for Maud, and for Helen, who was not finding her mother the help she needed, despite what seemed to be her best effort. It felt like a statement to me of what is missing in healthcare for the elderly and the mentally ill, in both the British setting of the book, and in what I have observed in this country. In that way, the novel was very effective, but I can't recommend it for anyone who is deeply disturbed by those issues.
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