"Mum, you don't live here, anymore." At times, “Elizabeth is Missing” is almost an unbearable read, to the extent that the plot, which is so often the source of tension in fiction, in this novel offers some relief from the sheer going-on of daily life and the almost unremitting mental deterioration of Maud Horsham, the main character and narrator. Maud, in her early eighties, has what looks like mid-stage Alzheimer’s Disease and is increasingly troubled by – as she sees it – the disappearance of her friend, Elizabeth, a disappearance that is very closely associated for Maud with the disappearance when she was a girl in post-Second World War England of Suki, her older sister. While not rivaling an Agatha Christie narrator who turns out to be the murderer, Maud’s account of her search for Elizabeth is frequently but not always unreliable. She makes notes but these are a painful parody of a detective’s notes because they add to her confusion and make even sharper the contrast with Mau