★★★★
This book had been sitting unread on my Kindle since August 2018, but I sought it out just before Christmas. I wanted to read it before watching the celebrated but very raw TV adaptation, with Glenda Jackson on splendid form in the lead role. Maud is an elderly woman, fiercely independent even though her world is becoming increasingly confusing. Her social life centres on visiting her best friend Elizabeth but, for some reason, Elizabeth doesn’t answer the door now when Maud goes to call. Where is she? Maud is determined to find out, and is baffled when her daughter Helen doesn’t seem to understand the urgency. As Maud turns detective, her mind begins to slip between past and present with ever-increasing frequency, for Elizabeth isn’t the only one who has disappeared. Maud’s present sense of loss echoes her distress when her elder sister Sukey disappeared back in the late 1940s, one mystery spilling into the next. But can any mystery be solved when you can’t even keep the days straight in your mind?
The Idle Woman 