mrs palfrey at the claremont book review

While out walking, staying active and learning more about her new London neighborhood, she takes a tumble outside of a writer’s apartment he kindly rescues her and calls her a taxi. I really enjoyed this sad yet comedic tale of an elderly lady who moves into a residence hotel so she would not be too lonely and yet have a place to live her almost last days. Checked out from the library – submitted for vote in my IRL book club as part of Books to Movie* Month but lost to A Single Man (please send good wishes to the universe that this is released to DVD before our next meeting because I screwed up and thought it was available – oops!) Palfrey at the Claremont by Elizabeth Taylor, The Viking Press 1971, 178 pages. The flowers start wilting before you give them away.Thoughts Mrs. Living gets harder, physically, mentally. You, too, will probably some day be in a position where you are conscious of every step you take and you are struggling to remember the poems you loved in your youth. It's a tricky thing to read a novel like this because it confronts you with the inevitable. Post's hidden treats) is incredibly effective in conveying the monotony of advanced age. Osmund's letter to the editor being published, or Mrs. The way the narrator pauses over some trifle among the elderly characters (like Mr. When the elderly crew is excited someone they know has died because it means they get to leave the hotel and socialize, it's funny but it cuts deeply. But the droll, ironic tone keeps it buoyant and poignant. The humiliation of age and decay is this novel's primary focus. And there are even a couple fart jokes.īut it's all just so sad.

The characters are nutty and interesting. Concerning an elderly woman's last days, spent in a hotel, this novel tackles heavy subject matter with the lightest touch. Palfrey at the Claremont is a funny little novel that manages to devastate. Both infancy and age are tiring times.'Įlizabeth Taylor's Mrs. Names slip away, dates mean nothing, sequences become muddled, and faces blurred. 'Every day for an infant means some new little thing learned every day for the old means some little thing lost.

Mrs palfrey at the claremont book review