Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont - Elizabeth Taylor
On a rainy Sunday in January, the recently widowed Mrs Palfrey arrives at the Claremont Hotel where she will spend her remaining days. Her fellow residents are magnificently eccentric and endlessly curious, living off crumbs of affection and snippets of gossip. Together, upper lips stiffened, they fight off their twin enemies: boredom and the Grim Reaper. Then one day Mrs Palfrey strikes up an unexpected friendship with Ludo, a handsome young writer, and learns that even the old can fall in love ... This is such a lovely book - and only the second I have ever read by this author. I suppose the days are long gone, when widowed ladies of a certain class took up residence in small hotels, and this novels takes us back to them. The relationship which develops between Mrs Palfrey and Ludo is enchanting, and slightly sad too - she tells her fellow residents that he is her grandson - as the real Desmond doesn't visit - and Ludo rather enjoys this subterfuge. Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont takes a bitter sweet look at ageing, and loneliness, although it does so with a certain amount of humour, and so this novel is never very sad or depressing. Mrs Palfrey is witty, and not at all the stereo typical old lady that has been reproduced in other lesser novels.