{"id":22294,"date":"2018-01-03T14:20:00","date_gmt":"2018-01-03T13:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/2018\/01\/03\/three-things-about-elsie-by-joanna-cannon-review-crime-comedy-and-old-age-confusion\/"},"modified":"2018-01-03T14:20:00","modified_gmt":"2018-01-03T13:20:00","slug":"three-things-about-elsie-by-joanna-cannon-review-crime-comedy-and-old-age-confusion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/?p=22294","title":{"rendered":"Three Things About Elsie by Joanna Cannon review \u2013 crime, comedy and old-age confusion"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In a care home for the elderly, a woman draws strength from a mysterious friendship in an attempt to recall past secrets and prove her sanity\u201cI\u2019m almost sure that yours was the first hand I ever held.\u201d Eighty-four-year-old Florence Claybourne\u2019s childhood friend Elsie accompanies Florence through her life at Cherry Tree Home for the Elderly, offering wisdom and support when both are in short supply. What would Florence be without Elsie? It\u2019s unthinkable. She is as close as the air Florence breathes, or closer; abiding when all else falls away. Even during Florence\u2019s solitary and catastrophic fall, which opens and closes the novel, the presence of Elsie is revealed.Cannon\u2019s bestselling debut, The Trouble With Goats and Sheep, centred on a missing woman. In Cannon\u2019s world, not only people but minds and memories threaten to go missing, and if memory is lost, so is the self. Three Things About Elsie belongs to a tradition of fiction set in old people\u2019s homes or supported accommodation. As in Kingsley Amis\u2019s Ending Up, Deborah Moggach\u2019s These Foolish Things and Jill McCorkle\u2019s Life After Life, an elderly group inhabits an enclosed community on a perilous edge, insecurely poised between vitality and death, comedy and pathos. Like M Scott Peck\u2019s A Bed by the Window, Cannon\u2019s second novel involves a mystery plot of crime and redemption. And like Peck, Cannon is a practising doctor, and knows what she is talking about. Continue reading&#8230;<br \/>\nVia: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/books\/2018\/jan\/03\/three-things-about-elsie-by-joanna-cannon-review\" target=\"_blank\">Three Things About Elsie by Joanna Cannon review \u2013 crime, comedy and old-age confusion<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In a care home for the elderly, a woman draws strength from a mysterious friendship in an attempt to recall past secrets and prove her sanity\u201cI\u2019m almost sure that yours was the first hand I ever held.\u201d Eighty-four-year-old Florence Claybourne\u2019s childhood friend Elsie accompanies Florence through her life at Cherry [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22294"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22294\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}