Se7en’s Fabulous Fun Post #233…

Wooohooo…. We are still here, just a crazy busy weekend, but I can not miss out on a fabulous fun post. Turns out we had the most unprecedented good weather this weekend. Forgive us if we feel lulled into a false sense of Spring…

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Book of the Week

When your week is too busy to stop and read a book… not even one, gasp… then a huge debate in my head to blog or to read… I am so glad I dived into this book and chose to read… because firstly weekends are meant for reading and secondly it is an excellent read that I am thrilled to share. I chose Elizabeth is Missing by Emma Healey, for review because after three years of a close relative battling with dementia, I have seen the difficulties, disappointments and the frustrations first hand. I was intrigued about a book where the main player was “80-something” year old Maud, who is a dementia sufferer. She believes her best friend, Elizabeth, is missing… all sorts of signs abound to tell her that something is terribly wrong. But she cannot sustain her train of thought long enough to put all the pieces of the puzzle together, let alone to clearly communicate with the folk that are in her circle of support. Maud’s world is filled with notes written to herself, everywhere; cups of tea left in her wake; and people who care, but you so want them to do more. If ever there was a book that you wanted to climb into then this is it.

Throughout the book, the author, Emma Healey, has very cleverly managed to let us see the story unfold through Maud’s eyes… or rather through her mind. A single train of thought is hard to find, a complete idea is nowhere to be found. It is not a viewpoint we often see. You find yourself relating to Maud’s frustrations, because you so want her to be able to finish a thought and unravel the mystery for us. As you know time warps for dementia patients and while we know there is the pressing problem that “Elizabeth is missing…” we find ourself spinning in and out of Maud’s childhood and the sinister disappearance of her older sister. This mystery within the pages of this book would have been a great story, but the added angle of the story through the mind of a dementia sufferer makes this book an essential read. Dementia is an illness on the increase, whoever you are you are going have ageing relatives or friends that suffer from it, this book provides a startling revelation of the frustrations that not only dementia sufferers suffer from, but their carers. This is really a novel about life, with a mystery within it to keep you reading. This is not one of those dramatic action packed mysteries… not a lot happens, except the steady decline of Maud’s memory,but all the while we get more and more eager to determine what has happened to Elizabeth and what happened to Maud’s older sister.
We were given this book for review purposes by Penguin Books South Africa, we were not paid for the review and our opinions are as usual entirely our own.

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This Weeks Lovely Links

  1. When I saw Emma Bradshaw’s summer holiday I knew that I needed one. I have no idea how carless families have a holiday, but a gal can dream and this looks perfect…
  2. You really do need to go for a little virtual wander through the streets of London with Books About Town… actually I think it would be worth getting on a plane for!!!
  3. I could write an entire chapter on the evolution of a blogger’s photographic storage … from not even thinking about it, to completely overloading and choking your computer, to frantic deleting… to something like this: on Digital Photo Storage.
  4. This is exactly my kind of packing… and why a family of ten looks like it isn’t taking any luggage when we travel.
  5. The cleverest kid friendly project I have seen in a while, I have a bug lover who would die to do this: Plastic Bottle Bug House: FamilyFun Test Drive on Parents.com.
  6. Oh exactly this: When People Ask How My Unschooled Kid Will Get Into College on Where’s Amanda?
  7. I am only going to ask this question once more… only once: Why can we not have an IKEA in Cape Town… Why oh why? You can take a peak at the 2015 catalogue on My Home Sweet Home.
  8. And the se7en + 1th link:

  9. A Blast From the Past: Last Week Was World Breastfeeding Week and dare I say for the first time n sixteen years I wasn’t actually nursing anyone. A journey that began suddenly on the night our firstborn arrived, we slowly outgrew about a year ago… there was no trumpeting or celebration, we just kind of moved on, as one does.

That’s us… Hope your weekend was a fabulous one and we are so looking forward to another great week of blogging with you all…

4 Replies to “Se7en’s Fabulous Fun Post #233…”

  1. Fun packing tip there! We don’t have a car and we (every couple of years) manage a holiday – yes we pack very light, and we embrace train travel. What’s the train network like in SA?

  2. Oh Zoe, I am going to have to do some research for sure. We seem to have mastered the stay-cation, though every now and then I feel a need to get up and go!!! We haven’t been away for a couple of years and traditionally everywhere we went we went by car. It is whole ballgame to think about alternative travel… train travel here is not like train travel in Europe, though I am sure not impossible when I put my mind to it. Time to put my thinking cap on!!!

  3. We have managed to holiday without a car BEFORE Jack and Emma. Now we are 6 people, it is impossible to do it. Our family in CT don’t live near any public transport so it’s a mission now!

  4. Hay Laurakim… I have a feeling that the best thing for me to do would be to totally forget about holidays… it is so tempting to thing about vacation time when half the world has been blogging about their summer getaways… I should perhaps be focused a little closer to home and the pile of laundry and the dishes right now – real life and all that!!! I have to say that Public transport in Cape Town is far from family friendly… luckily we have almost everything we need in easy reach of home… hope you have a great week!!!

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