The Secret of Elizabeth

by Vera Caspary

Kate and Allan Royce are driving home from a party in Westport, Connecticut one night when they see a girl in a beautiful but muddied dress wandering in the road and stop to pick her up. She is suffering from amnesia, so they name her Elizabeth X and take her into their home while the police try to establish her identity.

They are left in peace, until first a couple claim her as their daughter and then a psychiatrist arrives to say that she has escaped from his clinic. What does seem certain is that she is the child of wealthy parents.

But who really is Elizabeth X, and what has happened to her?

Genres: Fiction

Paperback

First published February 1, 1979

About the author

Vera Caspary, an acclaimed American writer of novels, plays, short stories and screenplays, was born in Chicago in 1899. Her writing talent shone from a young age and, following the death of her father, her work became the primary source of income for Caspary and her mother. A young woman when the Great Depression hit America, Caspary soon developed a keen interest in Socialist causes, and joined the Communist Party under a pseudonym. Although she soon left the party after becoming disillusioned, Caspary's leftist leanings would later come back to haunt her when she was greylisted from Hollywood in the 1950s for Communist sympathies. Caspary spent this period of self-described 'purgatory' alternately in Europe and America with her husband, Igee Goldsmith, in order to find work. After Igee's death in 1964, Caspary returned permanently to New York, where she wrote a further eight titles. Vera Caspary died in 1987 and is survived by a literary legacy of strong independent female characters.

Reviews

[Joe Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good book, terrible ending as per Vera's norm.

[Two Envelopes And A Phone · Rating 4 out of 5]

At this point, I’m probably wired not to give any novel featuring the amnesia trope a 5 star rating. But it may be more than that…I found I had to talk myself into giving this more than 3 stars. I had to dissect and examine this book for a while after finishing it, to decide if it was not just another “memory loss” shocker ruined by how many times I might have gone down this road before.

So, I’ve come to appreciate this one, because Elizabeth X, with her (alleged?) blank memory banks, brings the reader also to: Kate, Allan, Rick, Chauncey, Gordon, Mr Abel, and “Daddy”. And whenever Elizabeth the amnesiac did and said those trope things amnesiacs have gotten up to countless times before - and as they will again - it was her effect on those people around her that creates, dare I say it, unique feel. Those supporting characters I’ve mentioned…the new ones in her life, post “who am I??”, seem less interested in helping her recover her identity and more interested in claiming a blank slate of a person and creating the “Elizabeth” they want in their lives. It gets quite disturbing, actually, and at this point I feel like recommending this to people who go for stuff like Vertigo. And the people who come sniffing around claiming they knew “Elizabeth” before she disappeared and turned up emptied of herself - well, they also seem like they want to take possession of her, and, it is slowly revealed, slot her into spaces I can certainly understand she would have wanted to slip out of and run from forever.

This is an epistolary work, and I fall for those regularly; bouncing between the personal journals of Kate, Chauncey, Rick, and of course Elizabeth herself, does - with every peek at someone giving their side of Elizabeth’s story (and how they may be trying to edit or re-write it to serve their own gimme gimme gimme’s) - cure me of automatic amnesia-trope demerit points. It also creates a multi-faceted mystery complete with red herrings and false trails, with our tropey trooper at its center. And it’s hard not to feel sympathy for Miss E. X when one realizes that the swarm of “detectives” working on her case contains no Poirot, or Miss Silver, seeking pure truth - but rather, a cluster of pokers and prodders who, as they reveal Elizabeth’s various possible backstories, are also clearly motivated by who they want the poor woman to ultimately be. Or, are they poking at the ultimate prevaricating puppetmaster…?

Strange possessive love, sanitarium blues, bad dreams, hypocrisy, fame-seeking, a weird kidnapping loop, political scandal fodder…you bring out the worst, Elizabeth, no doubt, no doubt…

Um, your real name IS Elizabeth, isn’t it? Oh no, wait - likely not; even that name was given to you so someone could use you as a replacement, a comfort. Oh, poor Elizabeth X…

[Katherine Basto · Rating 4 out of 5]

I discovered this book and author through one of my book catalogues. I have to admit, Vera Caspary knows how to spin a mystery with added suspense. The beginning started strong: a young girl dressed in white is found by a couple... she is wandering about the woods seemingly lost. They take her in, feeling sorry for the beautiful 20-something young lady whom they call Elizabeth. Their guest is riddled with amnesia...she doesn't remember anything...often conveniently. Who is Elizabeth? Is she a scam artist, a mentally ill lost soul, a grifter? There was a bit of Wilkie Collins' "The Woman in White" here with a Patty Hearst vibe added in for good measure. Considering the author was 78 when she wrote this in the 1970s, she really added so many literary and political allusions and stereotypes of the time, that ultimately enriched the story.
Each section has writing from one of the characters' perspectives, including Elizabeth herself. The plot can get a bit confusing at points, but each character has an "image" of Elizabeth that perhaps they project on her and want her to be that person. She fills a void in each of the characters' lives.
The beginning drew me in but the latter part of the book seemed to drag on a bit. I was expecting major twists in the tale, but it wasn't quite the Hercule Poirot Murder Mystery.
Nonetheless, because I enjoyed Caspary's writing style, I will read some of her other novels in the future.

[Melissa · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a fairly interesting story. A times the story lagged a bit as different perspectives were told and parts of the story were repeated. Overall, the idea of the mysterious amnesiac is intriguing, but I found the Elizabeth character to lack depth. I never felt any real connection to her or knew what she thought so I never really cared what happened to her. Parts of the story have aged, as the book is from the late 70s, but even in the 70s it was no longer cool to fall in love with a cousin so that still had a bit of an ick factor and it was not really all that relevant that it was a cousin, so why?

[S.j. Thompson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Something of a more modern "gothic" story, The Secret of Elizabeth by Vera Caspary / 1979, has a twisty plot complete with mistaken identity, murder, an asylum, amnesia and a fairly large cast of characters each with their own sets of problems. The story is told from several points of view, which becomes confusing to the reader because they each backtrack to their own beginning with the mysterious Elizabeth X. I'm scoring the premise and plot pacing at a 2/5 stars, and the detailed backstory of the various characters a 4/5 to average out to an overall 3/5 stars.