Cultural Dessert

'Three Things About Elsie' by Joanna Cannon

8 November 2023

Joanna Cannon’s novel ‘The Trouble with Goats and Sheep’ (reviewed here in January 2022) charmingly used a naive first person narrator to turn a fairly normal domestic situation into a thrilling mystery. As we saw events primarily through the eyes of 10-year old Grace we were never entirely sure whether she had spotted sinister activities that the grown-ups hadn't noticed or whether she was mistakenly misinterpreting things she didn't understand. I've just finished reading Joanna Cannon's 2018 novel 'Three Things About Elsie' which uses a similar device but with the protagonist at the opposite end of her life journey. Here the first person narrator is Florence, a woman in her 80s living in a retirement home. As she starts to encounter signs that an intruder has been in her room, and the reappearance of a shadowy character from her past, we begin to wonder how much of what she tells us is true and how much is the result of her failing memory. Like 'The Trouble with Goats and Sheep' the story becomes a detective mystery as Florence and her friends try to uncover long hidden secrets. It's an entertaining and engaging novel, easy to read but full of beautifully turned phrases and much cleverer than it first appears. As with 'The Trouble with Goats and Sheep' I felt the brilliantly unsettling device of the ambiguity of the narrator was watered down by inserting chapters from the points of view of some of the other main characters. But Joanna Cannon creates a great cast of likeable characters who initially appear to be cartoonish but gradually reveal their sympathetic human depth.

Labels: Books

posted by Robin Simpson @ 1:09 pm