What a wonderful novel! Long review to come on my YouTube

This review is written with thanks to Harper Collins UK and Netgalley for my copy of Three Things About Elsie.
Florence Claybourne lives at Cherry Tree Home for the Elderly. When a new resident arrives at Cherry Tree, Florence recognises him as someone from her past. But Ronnie Butler died in 1953, didn't he?
Cannon's debut novel, The Trouble With Goats And Sheep featured in my Top Ten Reads Of 2016 , so I was unbelievably excited when I was given the chance to read Three Things About Elsie through Netgalley. I was slightly apprehensive that it might not reach the same heights, but I shouldn't have worried! In Three Things About Elsie, Cannon introduces us to a very colourful cast of characters: not just the residents, but the staff, especially Handy Simon and Miss Ambrose, too. Although the characters are all quite different to me, I found that Cannon's descriptions, particularly of their thoughts, feelings and memories, made the abstract concepts recognisable to me so that each character was easy to relate to.
The majority of Three Things About Elsie is narrated by Florence, who has fallen in her flat and is waiting for someone to find her. Florence's voice is so authentic that the novel took me on a rollercoaster of emotions. Florence's matter-of-fact tone made me laugh, but there was often a sadness behind the humour that makes the novel a poignant one, and the novel often made me cry too.
Cannon is the mistress of the cosy mystery story. Whilst, at first glance, Three Things About Elsie, is a gentle novel about life in a retirement home, it actually has much darker undertones as Florence and her friends try to solve the mystery of Ronnie Butler. I was intrigued by this element, and I wanted to keep reading to find out what really happened. There are also a few surprises along the way, which made it even more interesting for me.

Absolutely beautiful novel. I couldn’t read it in one go, I had to savour it. Life in an old people’s home/murder mystery. A little gem of a book. Recommended

I really liked Joanna Cannon's first book but I absolutely loved this one. It really speaks from the heart about so many things. Exploring the idea of leaving something behind after we die is something that I think about a lot. Can we make a difference? Will we be rmembered? Is everything we do just a waste of time in the whole scheme of things? It's comical, tragic, funny and sad but leaves you thinking. Jo Cannon's keen observational eye is spot on in so many cases. It also says a lot about how we treat the elderly and I really engaged with Florence as she struggled to remember things. I didn't get the major plot twist until two thirds of the way through and even then there were more surprises to come. A story that is very different, engaging and about being kind to yourself.

Thought-provoking, heart-warming - Joanna Cannon yet again strikes the perfect balance between funny and poignant.

Joanna Canon has written another great novel following her debut, The Trouble with Goats and Sheep, which I loved.

This time she has written about three friends, Florence, Elsie and Jack who live in sheltered accommodation. The story begins with Florence having had a fall and as she lies waiting to be rescued she thinks back over the months and years and especially about her friendship with Elsie.

While this book deals sensitively with ageing, memory, friendship, independence, being heard and more it also involves a mystery and has a twist. It will at times make you smile and at others bring tears to your eyes, but it will make you feel.

Joanna Cannon is a beautiful writer and a great story teller and I look forward to her third book.

Who knew that a story set in a nursing home could be so exciting? The mystery and the intrigue of the novel led to Three Things About Elsie being extremely unputdownable and, in fact, it took me only three sittings to read all of the book's nearly-five hundred pages. All of the characters are wonderfully, heartbreakingly real and the settings that they inhabit feel tangible - the description of the nursing home’s trip to the seaside town of Whitby was an absolute delight, and evoked the many childhood memories that I have of family holidays spent on the coast of the North Sea.
I think that is really where the Three Things About Elsie excels - it is evocative. It stirs up long-forgotten memories and thoughts and feelings of the reader, that are parallel in the book’s focus on things now buried. The main character, Florence, particularly struggles with memory and it is quite easy, no matter the reader’s age, to see yourself reflected in her strive for clarity and the security of the familiar.
Joanna Cannon has crafted Florence and all of the characters, in a way that makes them feel so human that it practically seeps from each page. I can imagine passing them on the street, or overhearing them on a bus. I can see my grandma in them, sure, but I can also see myself in them. And, that is what so great about it - it’s relatable, it’s applicable, it’s empathetic; it proves that, in our very nature as human beings, we’re not all that different from one another.
Additionally, this book really focuses on the connections, the ones big and small, that link us to other people and the affect that everybody leaves on other people’s lives and the world as a whole. It has numerous passages that I have highlighted on my Kindle that are able to describe love and memory and the passage of time, far more eloquently than I can even dream of achieving. And, somehow, I have yet to pick up The Trouble With Goats and Sheep (Joanna Cannon’s acclaimed debut from a few year ago) but now that I have discovered the craft and the skill that went into Three Things About Elsie, it is now at the top of my to-be-read pile.
All in all, a five-star read and, a perfect book to be one of my first in 2018. Let’s hope that all of rest of the year's books manage to live up to its high precedent. Somehow I doubt it..

Elsie is Florence’s best friend, has been since childhood and is the person who helps Florence to remember things.  Unfortunately, Florence needs quite a lot of help these days to remember things, not just from the past but in the present.  Although there are some things you don’t share, not even with your best friend.  Some secrets are best left tucked away where no-one can find them.   However, memory can play tricks on you so the things you most want to remember remain elusive whilst things you’d rather forget come floating to the surface unbidden.

The reader quickly learns two of the three things about Elsie, but the third thing?  Well, there are a few small clues for the careful reader.

Amongst many other themes, Three Things About Elsie explores how small actions (or inactions) may have long term consequences, how one should never underestimate the impact of small acts of kindness and that most people have hidden qualities they may not even realise they possess.

I have to say the mystery around the new resident and its resolution didn’t completely work for me as there were things I found too improbable.  However, I loved the way there were more pieces of the jigsaw (to reference the cover) than one first imagined and how the author cleverly brought these together, with small, beautifully formed and unanticipated links between events and characters.  Talking of the cover, was there ever a better use of a Battenburg cake in a story line?    Plus you may never think quite the same way again about a packet of cheese and onion crisps.

There are some wonderful nuggets of writing – too many to quote them all, but here are a few of my favourites:
‘It makes you wonder if you did have a purpose, but it floated past you one day, and you just didn’t think to flag it down.’
‘We explored pockets of the past. Favourite stories were retold, to make sure they hadn’t been forgotten.  Scenes were sandpapered down to make them easier to hold.’  
‘It’s the greatest advantage of reminiscing.  The past can be exactly how you wanted it to be the first time around.’

Although one can’t help falling in love with Florence, I grew really fond of some of the supporting characters, in particular Miss Ambrose, Simon and Jack.  So I have to take issue with Miss Ambrose when she remarks, “Most of us are just secondary characters.  We take up all the space between the few people who manage to make a mark.”

I really enjoyed the book.  Yes, there is sadness in the story (you will probably shed a little tear at the end) but there are also wonderful moments of humour, both observational and in the dialogue.  For example, when the hotel owner is asked to provide a room for interviews during a trip to Whitby:

“Maybe the television room?” said Miss Ambrose.
“That’s out of the question.  It’s Tuesday,“ said Gail, rather mysteriously, but she didn’t elaborate.  “I suppose I could you let you have the staff rest room.  Although you’ll need to be out by eight, because I’ve got a new shift coming in and I’ll need to change my slacks.”    [It’s the word ‘slacks’ that really tickled me.]

Or, decorating a room for a dance:

‘Miss Ambrose’s bunting stretched all the way around the room, except for a small gap in the corner due to an oversize painting of the Princess of Wales.  Simon and Miss Ambrose both stood with their hands on their hips, admiring their efforts.
“Shame about Diana.” Miss Ambrose looked over at the corner.
“I could get the Sellotape,” said Simon.
Miss Ambrose stared at him. “I meant passing away so young.”

I received an advance reader copy courtesy of NetGalley and publishers The Borough Press in return for an honest review.

Three Things About Elsie, is a brilliantly accomplished novel about aging, memory, friendship and humanity that left me with ALL OF THE FEELS. 

84-year-old Florence lies alone on the floor of her flat at Cherry Tree Home for the Elderly. As she waits to be found, she looks back on her life and her long friendship with Elsie. Best friends since school, Elsie and Florence have done everything together, including keeping a terrible secret. But what does this have to do with the charming new resident Gabriel Price? Why is Florence so afraid of him? And why does he look like a man who died sixty years ago? As Florence is about to discover, there is so much more to anyone than the worst thing they have ever done. 

One of the things I loved about Cannon's first novel, The Trouble with Goats and Sheep, was her grasp of character. She's worked as a doctor and specialised in psychiatry which really comes across in her books as her grasp of personality quirks is nuanced and rounded. None of her characters are perfect but all of them are wonderfully, painfully, heart-breakingly real. I particularly warmed to Jack, a former military man and one of Florence's fellow inmates at Cherry Tree who takes it upon himself to befriend her and help work out the mystery of her past. I also liked Handy Simon, Cherry Tree's handyman who, nearing his forties, is still trying to figure out his role in life and will discover that he has hidden talents and depths. And Florence herself, struggling with the slips between present and past, is wonderfully complex - at times difficult and argumentative, others perceptive and kind, she serves as a reminder that the elderly people around us are more than as we see them - they have lived, loved and lost throughout full and varied lives. 

In tone, the novel reminded me of Emma Healy's Elizabeth is Missing, another novel with an elderly and confused narrator carrying a deep secret at it's heart - and fans of that book should definitely give Three Things About Elsie a read - but, at it's heart this is a novel less about what happened in the Florence's past and more about how the ripples of that have affected her present and led her to where and who she is now. It's also a novel about the deep and abiding love found within deep friendship - Florence and Elsie's relationship is beautifully and movingly portrayed and, when Jack becomes involved too, fantastically wry and amusing as well. Some moments had me laughing out loud, others with wet cheeks and red eyes.

To say too much about the plot would be to give far too much of the novel away but it's both a heart-warming and heart-breaking story, filled with everyday reality, bittersweet memory, moments of joy and others of deep regret. Most of all though, it's filled with humanity. Humanity practically oozes off every page - the fine threads that connect us all together, the stories we tell others and the stories we tell ourselves, the small lives that leave loud echoes and, most importantly of all, the long seconds that give us chance to make choices that define who we want to be. I could have underlined so many sentences and paragraphs that resonated with quiet wisdom - it's one of those books that I just know will gestate inside me for a while, turning over in my brain. The sort of book that stays with you long after you finish the final page.

This book took me two attempts and I'm so glad I picked it up again. Initially I was put off by it being set in a care home as I had not long finished 'Elisabeth is missing' and felt it wasn't for me, but over the Christmas break I picked it up for another go and couldn't put it down. It is a really heart-warming story and reminds us that just because people are old doesn't mean they have less to offer, in fact the very opposite as they have lived such full lives. There is a very clever twist at the end as well which I had not seem coming.

We begin this book with our main character, Florence, lying on the floor of her flat in the Elderly Sheltered Accommodation village she lives in. As she lies there waiting for someone to come to her aid, she starts to reminisce about things that have happened in her life in her recent and not so recent past as well as what is happening in her present. Her present being defined as life in the care village, her friendships and daily battles and, more recently, the appearance of a face from the past. One who shouldn't be there. What starts as a bit of a trip down memory lane swiftly becomes more and more shocking as it goes on. But its not without its lighter moments. There are some rather amusing incidents also recalled by Florence, especially some of her antics with fellow "inmates" Elsie and Jack. We see the terrible trio conspire to manipulate things to meet their own ends, mostly the investigation of who exactly is the new resident and why has he moved in? There is also quite a bit of soul searching to be had along the way as would be expected from characters in their twilight years desperate to hold on to some element of control in their lives.
It's quite an emotional book all told. But it does encompass the positives as well as the negatives. I laughed out loud at times, at others, I wept, It was also a bit shocking at times. Especially as I really got to know the characters along the way, with them almost becoming friends, the connection was strong in places.
The ending. Well, for the majority of the book, I had no idea where exactly we were going. But, when we got there, it was perfect. That's all I'm saying here. Perfect, thought provoking, poignant and one that stayed with me for a while after finishing.
This is the first book I have read by this author but I have heard very good things about The Trouble with Goats and Sheep and, after reading this one, I will definitely be reading that too.
My thanks go to the Publisher and Netgalley for the chance to read this book.

I thought it would be depressing, and at times it was, as it’s about the helplessness and frustrations of old age, but this is a very beautifully written book with so many memorable lines, I found myself writing them down to revisit later.
“I watched the woman’s eyes, milky with too much seeing..”
Narrated through the eyes of the lovely, feisty Florence, I was kept guessing right till the final page. A very moving, thought provoking book.

I think this book is a missed trick. I like Joanna Cannon having seen her at an author event and she has a natural style but it felt “dumbed down” to me. This was an important topic, with a chance to expose care of the elderly and it gors some way to that but the voice for me is reminiscent of a Victoria Wood or Julie Walters sketch which will appeal to a lot of people but for me it takes the book out of the serious fiction bracket. I am being picky as i wanted to love this book but that nagging annoyance spoils it for me. I would love her to try something more serious and literary, I think she is a natural writer.

Florence Claybourne is in her eighties and lives in sheltered accommodation named Cherry Tree. One afternoon she falls and contemplates the events of the previous few weeks, and her life. Elsie is Florence’s best friend, the one who keeps her on the straight and narrow, even more important now that she has been threatened with expulsion due to her behaviour.

It was called sheltered accommodation, but I’d never quite been able to work out what we were being sheltered from. The world was still out there. It crept in through the newspapers and the television. It slid between the cracks of other people’s conversation and sang out from mobile telephones. We were the ones hidden away, collected up and ushered out of sight, and I often wondered if it was actually the world that was being sheltered from us.

In some ways this book reminds me of Elizabeth is Missing by Emma Healey, a book I found too hard to properly enjoy because reading a story about a woman with dementia when my own mother was suffering of this awful disease, meant that I made unfair comparisons with the real-life situation whereas the book was by its very nature fictional. I have a feeling that if I’d read this book at the same time, I might have drawn similar comparisons. I mention this because I firmly believe that each of us brings our own life's experiences, our hopes and our fears with us to each book we read, and because of that our take on the story is bound to be slightly different. Fortunately I found this a charming read albeit one with a solid mystery which kept me entertained and softened the sometimes harsher intrusive thoughts about the realities of old age.
Florence is clearly in the early stages of dementia but she’s a fighter. When a man she recognises from some sixty years before turns up in the same sheltered housing complex, a man she believes died all those years ago, she’s switched on enough to try to find some proof. With the help of Elsie and the brilliantly portrayed General Jack, she finds out the man’s name is Gabriel Price although once she finally remembers, she believes he is in fact is Ronnie Butler. What significance Ronnie Butler played in Florence’s life is very gradually revealed during the time she lays on the floor of her flat, waiting for help and looking at ‘all manner of nonsense under that sideboard.’

The characters make this book, Florence and her friend Elsie are a wonderful double act with some gentle, wry humour to lift the spirits. The Manager of the care home Miss Bissell who seems to need to lie down a lot of the time, when she isn't doing Sudoku. Miss Bissell wisely lets Miss Ambrose, one of our third person narrators, a supervisor at Cherry Tree, have the difficult conversations, even if she’s rarely allowed to make any decisions. Through Miss Ambrose’s eyes we get to see a different view of Florence. A woman who is decidedly not keen on joining in with the other residents, a woman who talks or quite often shouts to herself and someone who buys twenty three Battenberg cakes that are stacked high in the sideboard, a fact Florence staunchly denies. The other third person narrator is the adorable Handy Simon, the handyman who over the course of the book has a leap forward in terms of character development from a shy young man welded to the image of his hero fireman father to a man who begins to imagine, and realise. that there is a world outside the facts he's been so attached to.

With the time ticking away while Florence lies on the floor, imagining who her saviour will be, the story is bought up to the present, although the truth of course is buried deep in the past.

One thing that can’t be denied is that this is a story that will imprint itself on your mind, the language is absolutely beautiful, the observations knife-sharp so although the story on the surface is seemingly gentle, has a hard kernel at the centre which made spending some time with the residents of Cherry Tree an absolute delight.

I'd like to say a huge thank you to the publishers HaperCollins UK who allowed me to read Three Things About Elsie ahead of publication on 11 January 2018, this unbiased review is my thank you to them and the hugely talented Joanna Cannon.

Last year I read The Trouble With Goats and Sheep and it instantly became an all-time favorite. I fell in love with Joanna Cannon's writing and her two main characters. The story was sweet, funny, poignant and overall beautiful. Three Things About Elsie was one of my most anticipated reads this 2018 and I wanted it to be the first this year. And I have to say it was a fantastic book!

It's funny because when I read the blurb of this novel, I thought: "well, this is definitely not similar to TTWGAS at all". However, as I kept reading about Florence and Elsie, I gradually realized Three Things About Elsie was actually super similar to her previous novel. The structure: two female friends investigating despite being total amateurs and hence facing several obstacles. The humour, the witty dialogue, the innocence, the meaning of friendship...

The plot started off a bit slow but it gradually got more and more engaging. In my opinion, Three Things About Elsie just keeps getting better as the story progresses. There was some gaslighting, excellent (and hilarious) dialogue and a few chapters narrated by other secondary characters. Joanna Cannon has the ability of making you care about everyone she writes about, she excels at crafting vulnerable characters that will forever stay in your mind.

I particularly enjoyed the book's structure, featuring Florence's present chapters where she foreshadows what she thinks is going to happen and then switching back to one month before the incident, when it all started. I couldn't wait to know what was exactly going on.

There was a particular aspect about this novel that I found extremely predictable in the sense that we've all experienced this type of ending before. And it works, it certainly does, but I'm afraid it's not going to surprise me anymore, which yes, it's kind of sad, but then again it's my fault because I overthink every small detail I read. Don't worry, because there were plenty of other small surprises, and there was one tiny detail which wasn't even relevant in plot terms but it made me all tear-eyed. And it wasn't the only time I cried. The last sentence of the book was so beautiful...

I have no issues with this book whatsoever, but I did love The Trouble With Goats and Sheep a bit more, maybe because it was the first or because I can't resist a quirky child narrator. But Three Things About Elsie is a lovely book that I would recommend to everyone.

A wonderful gentle book set in a care home for those in their twilight years. Flo and Elsie's lives are disrupted when a man arrives who they think died 60 or more years ago. Wonderful characters, some very funny moments. The reader becomes immersed in the plot both in the here and now and as the revelations of the past are revealed.

Florence is 84, lives in old folks home, and has had a bit of a fall. This book moves between Florence's past, her recent life in the Cherry Tree Home for the Elderly and, in an Alan Bennett kind of way, her thoughts as she lies on the floor of her flat. Florence is a lovingly drawn character - from her youthful adventures with her friend Elsie, who is still a major part of her life at Cherry Tree, to her life in the home and her feared future at Greenbanks (where residents are sent if they become senile or otherwise troublesome) - and the story of her life gently unfolds. That is until a new face appears at the home who, despite claiming to be Gabriel Price, Florence and Elsie are sure is Ronnie Butler - a ne'er-do-well from their past who they are sure was involved in the death of Elsie's sister.

This book was beautiful. Florence, Elsie and their friend Jack, another Cherry Three resident, are very real, warm and fallible as are Miss Ambrose and Handy Simon, who work at the home. The story is emotionally charged but never overly sentimental or totally predictable. This is not just an amusing story about older people - although it is very funny in parts - but also a slightly heartbreaking one. Not just because of the tragic events of Elsie and Florence's youth but also, and more tellingly, because of the possibilities for Florence's future.

I was slightly irritated with this book because I had worked out very early on that Elsie wasn’t actually real. However I enjoyed the story and the characters but I’m not sure how memorable this book will be in a few months time. Therefore I award a strong three stars

I could not have picked a more perfect book to beginning my 2018 reading year. I loved The Trouble With Goats and Sheep by the same author which I read a couple of years ago and I think this is even better. Although it is  the first book I read in 2018, I am certain in will be in that my and many other people's Top Reads list come the end of the year. This is a book rainy days are made for, days when you can curl up and just savour the wonderful, insightful writing because once you start, trust me, you won't want to put it down.

Florence has had a fall in her sheltered housing flat and as she lies on the floor, waiting to be found she reflects on her life. In between her memories, the reader also finds out about her more recent life experiences from Florence herself and staff members Handy Simon and Miss Ambrose. Florence is clearly living with some form of dementia and although it seems from others' reactions that her condition may be deteriorating, Florence is quite adamant that she is not responsible for the strange things happening around her. As she says rather poignantly though, "I can't find a memory I can trust".  Elsie is her best friend. Friends from their childhood days, she can always say just the right thing to make Florence feel better and she also knows some big secrets from the past.

As you can probably guess from that opening paragraph, I absolutely adored this book. It is full of characters you will take to your heart, characters who are fully rounded, have their flaws, are ordinary yet extraordinary at the same time. Florence is the one whose voice we hear most often and the character I loved the most. I had a soft spot for Handy Simon too though, a character who did not seem to have much self-worth at the beginning of the book but grew in confidence and self-belief throughout. The power of friendship and kindness is all too evident. Fellow resident Jack is another character whose kindness and belief in Florence helps her to believe in herself even if she can't trust her memory so well any more. 

There is so many layers to this book not least of which are several mysteries: what happened to Beryl, Elsie's sister, who exactly is Gilbert Price, what is the big secret Florence has been carrying all her life and who is responsible for all the strange things happening in her flat? It is not until the closing chapters, as the mysteries are resolved, that we see how seemingly insignificant moments mentioned earlier in the book are in fact all connected.

And that to me is the main message I took from the book - that we are all connected. As all the pieces of the story fall into place, like the jigsaw pieces on the front cover, each life is connected in so many ways to so many others. Each life, no matter how ordinary it seems, has a profound effect on so many others. In one of many passages I marked for its beautifully written perception, this conversation between Handy Simon and Florence sums it up. They are talking about a fossil which one of the care-home residents owns, but I feel it is equally relevant to the lives of the characters and indeed every one of our lives:

"Before this fossil was found..... it was still influential, wasn't it? It changed the universe in some way. We just don't know how...... And everything it influenced, all those things will change the universe in some way too. I don't suppose we'll ever know the impact it made." "No matter how long or short a time you are here, the world is ever so slightly different because you existed"

I hope I have convinced you to read this wonderful book. It's about friendship and trust, valuing yourself, respecting others and finding your place in life. With wonderful, warm, sensitive writing Three Things About Elsie will provoke all kinds of emotions as you read and may leave you with a lump in your throat but also with a song in your heart.

Oh, this book was just so good! It was so different. It was a nice easy read but I also couldn’t put it down easily. A lovely little thriller.
Thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley for an advance copy in exchange for an honest review.