Clare Pooley

Digital audiobook performed by Clare Corbett

This is a delightful ensemble piece featuring Iona Iverson, a woman of a certain age, who has long held a position as an advice columnist. Every day she rides the tube to her job site, along with her French bulldog, Lulu. She recognizes the regular riders but doesn’t interact with them and knows them only by the descriptions she’s given them, such as “Impossibly-Pretty-Bookworm,” or “Mr-Too-Good-To-Be-True.” And then one morning, one show more of the group chokes on a grape, and another performs the Heimlich maneuver, saving the first man’s life. And this shared experience brings them into one another’s circles with charming results.

I really liked all these characters, even the insufferable Piers, and enjoyed watching how their expanded circle of friendship affected each of them. I worried for some of them as their backstories unfolded and cheered them all on as they emerged from their troubles and all vowed to “be more Iona.” It’s my own new rallying cry!

Clare Corbett does a marvelous job of performing the audio version. She has a lot of characters to deal with and gives them each a unique voice.

Note: Originally published in the U.K. as The People on Platform 5 show less

Lydia is taking on a new job running a social club at The Mandel Community Center. She is the nicest woman who cares about people. She is married to a miserable and selfish man and while you won’t like him we do need him in this story - he has a part to play. As to our Seniors - Art is an actor with few parts coming his way. Art has a friend, William who is a retired paparazzo and is the most neutral of the characters. William’s job is to look out for Art, to encourage him to make sure show more he continues on. Pauline is a retired headmistress who you won’t like and it doesn’t matter. There is a dog named Margaret Thatcher, a little boy named Lucky who isn’t and who has never spoken. Ruby will knit anything and she does - pay attention to Ruby. Anna mows down anyone who steps in front of her walker - and she tends toward very distinctive hair colors. Then there is Daphne who is at the center of it all - her still waters run very deep. These over seventies want to skydive, target practice, speed date, learn martial arts, perform synchronized swimming or go-karting - don’t even mention bingo. There are other important people on the nursery school side of the community center, but I will leave you to discover them at your own pace.

There is so much more to this than a bunch of septuagenarians getting together at a senior center trying to make friends, enjoying activities, living the best of their days and then of course they have to try to save the center from the council and the developers. This was funny, very funny and I have to admit to coffee snorting moments. There is poignancy, ageism and more but it is just a wonderful, upbeat and did I mention that it is often laugh out loud hilarious writing that can pull you out of a foul mood. The characters are great, the writing is super and the dialog is - just read this book.

A million thanks to Pamela Dorman Books and NetGalley for a copy. show less

I just knew from the first few pages that I was going to love Clare Pooley's debut fiction novel, The Authenticity Project. Trust me, you will too....

An older, lonely widower/artist who has spent the last fifteen years pretty much by himself in his home is determined to get back out into the world. He comes up with an idea.....he writes his truth in a green notebook and leaves it on a table in a local cafe.....and The Authenticity Project is begun.

"Everyone lies about their lives. What would show more happen if you shared the truth instead? The one thing that defines you, that makes everything else about you fall into place. Not on the internet, but with those real people around you? Maybe nothing. Or maybe telling that story would change your life, or the life of someone you've not met me. That's what I want to find out."

What a great premise eh? I couldn't wait to see what would happen next. Well, the notebook is picked up again and again - and the lives of six strangers intersect.....

I loved Pooley's characters - they're all wonderfully drawn, strengths, foibles and all. (And yes, I'd like to be sitting around the table with them at the back of the cafe.) I was immediately invested in their lives and kept quickly turning pages to see who would next pick up the book. The narrative moves from player to player and again and this only ensured I couldn't put the book down. Those intersections get more and more complicated, changes happen and I certainly didn't see some of them coming. Some I liked, some I didn't, but they were all 'just right' for the book.

Pooley's writing is so easy to read, flows so easily and is utterly addictive. If you're looking for a warm, feel-good, uplifting, unexpected, just be yourself tale, this is one you'll want to read. After I turned the last page, I wondered - what would happen if someone actually did this?

"If we all stopped making each other feel sad and inadequate by pretending to be perfect, and instead opened up about our struggles, we would all be much happier, and feel less alone." Clare Pooley.

This is easily one of my favourite reads for 2020 - and yes, I know we're only in February! show less

IN A NUTSHELL
'How To Age Disgracefully' was a lot of fun. It was cute without being saccharin. It felt like my favourite kind of British feel-good Christmas movie: chaotic, mildly subversive but warm-hearted. The changing points of view and the mix of ages (from the very old to the very young) and personalities (from the so introverted that they never speak, to the so confident that they never doubt themselves) kept the story fresh. The humour was situational rather than slapstick, etching show more the characters more deeply. And it makes me smile at least once a chapter.

The humour in 'How To Age Disgracefully' worked wonderfully well for me. It lifted my mood and made me smile. It was the most fun I've had per page in a long time.

The book opens with a police car pulling over a bus filled with a mix of pensioners and very young children, almost all of whom assume the police officer is there to arrest them. When the police officer finally explains who they do want to arrest, it turns out that the police's most-wanted is no longer on the bus. The book then flips back in time to show the events leading up to this bizarre scene.

This is a closely observed, character-driven story that draws its humour not just from the often larger-than-life personalities of the main characters but from the small but important differences in how people of different ages and social backgrounds see and respond to one another. The plot is driven by a sense of rebellion, slowly moving towards a simmering point. I loved the inexorable escalation of the anarchy and the freedom it seemed to promise. The choas seemed to fuel the development of the characters into more interesting and happier versions of themselves.

Most of the characters in the book are members of a local Senior Citizens Social Club. They're old, often grumpy, as difficult to wrangle as cats and prone to taking potshots at one another. They don't start to come together until they are presented with a common enemy. After an unfortunate (fatal but funny) incident, the Local Council decides to close down the Community Centre that the Senior Citiizen's Social Club meets in. The oldsters respond by collaborating with the tiny tots from the nursery that meets in the same building, to shame the Council into keeping the Community Centre open by putting on a highly publicised nativity play. The result was as uplifting as it was chaotic.

My favourite character (the one I want to be when I grow up) was Daphne: a seventy-year-old with a dodgy past, an imperious manner, an ambitious To Do List and a looming deadline for disaster. She was a marvellous creation, but what really made the book a pleasure was that the people around her all brought their own little bits of anarchic magic to the plot. show less