Three Things About Elsie has an unconventional narrator. Meet 84-year-old Florence Claybourne. She lives in a nursing home with her best friend Elsie. The novel opens with Florence lying on the floor. She’s fallen over and is waiting for someone to notice and come help her. Flo, as she’s affectionally referred to by Elsie, is confused when someone who she believed to have drowned sixty years ago comes to live in the nursing home. However, Flo is getting old and becoming forgetful, so when she tries to tell people that this man was involved in Elsie’s sister’s murder, no one except Elsie believes her. But how do you convince someone that you’re not going a little mad when you can see someone who is supposed to be dead? The two best friends must revisit the past and piece together the story: “We looked up at a wall of photographs, and the past gazed back at us. Black-and-white ballrooms. A hundred foxtrots, captured forever within a lens”.
The tale is unconventional with beautifully descriptive passages. There was no character I did not enjoy reading about and no plot point too small. Here is a novel about enduring friendship and tenderness: “She was the only one left. The only one who would know if my mind had finally wandered away and left me all to my own devices”. Who will remember us after we die, who will “dust our photograph”, as Flo puts it? What does our life amount to? Questions of mortality and love crop up again and again and are made more urgent by the looming presence of time and the imminent threat of Flo’s relocation to a different nursing home where they confine patients to their rooms while they wait for the end.
Joanna Cannon spent time working as a hospital doctor and then specialised as a psychiatrist. Her debut The Trouble with Goats and Sheep (2016) was a huge success and she amassed a cult following. Three Things About Elsie is even more daring that her debut and shines all the brighter. A wonderful story with a set of strong, fleshed out characters – this book will melt the coldest of hearts and bring a tear to the driest of eyes.
●●●●●
