What the critics thought of Elizabeth is Missing by Emma Healey, My Salinger Year by Joanna Rakoff and Mr Mercedes by Stephen King
Deserving of 'prizes in all categories' … Emma Healey's debut, Elizabeth Is Missing, manages to be both a comedy and a thriller. Photograph: Katherine Rose
Elizabeth Is Missing, the debut novel by 26-year-old Emma Healey, which tackles dementia, "has been dubbed 'Gone Gran'," noted Rosamund Urwin in the Evening Standard, after Gillian Flynn's bestseller Gone Girl. Like that book, it "has the mysterious disappearance of a woman at its heart. Its publisher, Viking, will also be hoping it replicates Gone Girl's success: the company fought off eight rivals for the book and paid a six-figure sum." Urwin's verdict was that the novel is "charming but never cloying", though "the ending itself is a little anticlimatic". But other reviews were ecstatic. "Normally a well-observed, literary novel that accurately shows us ourselves by deepening our knowledge of what it is to be human cannot manage, as well, to be both a comedy and a thriller. Elizabeth is Missing, however, encompasses these genres and deserves prizes in all categories," judged Philippa Perry in the Independent: "we have two main themes. How it feels to experience dementia, and a page-turner of a detective story. If I had to describe it in one word, it would be "beautiful". It is a gripping thriller, but it's also about life and love." According to Joan Smith in the Sunday Times, it's "no conventional crime novel but a compelling work that crosses literary genres … The result is bold, touching and hugely memorable
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