Mrs Palfry at the Claremont

Author Elizabeth Taylor is a new discovery for me. I receive book recommendations from a variety of sources... friends, newsletters, Goodreads. I add many to my "to read" list in Goodreads, which has ballooned ridiculously to over 900. And I add some of them to my reserve list at the library. I don't know when or why I added Mrs. Palfry at the Claremont, but it arrived just before the library closed for the COVID-19 lockdown. And, serendipitously, it arrived in the same batch with Susan Moon's this is getting old. (Or perhaps I read a newsletter about aging and that's why they both ended up on my reserve list?) But I digress...

Susan Moon's collection of essays addresses the challenges of aging with wry good humor. I saw myself in many of her vignettes, and they made me nod and smile. I found Taylor's fictional treatment of aging far more difficult to read. Her characters are a group of eccentric, lonely old people, living in reduced circumstances in a hotel in central London. Their lives are very "small" with minimal interaction beyond their little circle. 

Mrs. Palfry, the central character, is recently widowed and profoundly lonely. She has a strained relationship with her distant daughter and grandson. She doesn't feel any real connection to her fellow inhabitants at the hotel. But she does establish a relationship, of sorts, to a young man she meets while on a walk.

Some of the reviews talk about humor. And, apparently, there was a movie a few years ago. The book jacket that features a scene from the movie shows Mrs. Palfry looking well-groomed and not all that old and feeble. She smiles while her young friend laughs. I find this image almost offensive because it so completely contradicts my impressions of the book. For me, the few moments of laughter in the book bordered on pathetic. The overall impressions that stay with me are shabbiness, loneliness, and pain (both physical and emotional). This is simply not a happy book.


That being said, I do recommend it. Taylor writes masterfully, capturing the eccentricities of the Claremont inhabitants with spare but elegant prose. Following in the tradition of Jane Austen, Taylor gives us a story in which very little happens but we gain powerful insights into the indignities of aging and of human nature in general. What the heck. I guess I will add another Taylor book or two to my "to read" list.