Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont

One of the expressions my mum used all the time was “better late than never”. That thought was echoing around my head when I eventually picked up Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont. So many of my trusted GR friends have given it wonderful reviews and Robert McCrum included it in his top 100 novels of all time (https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/aug/17/the-100-best-novels-written-in-english-the-full-list).
Written in 1971 the novel follows Laura Palfrey as she moves to the Claremont hotel in London. The hotel houses several elderly people. They are all wonderfully flawed and utterly believable characters. Mr Osmond is both a mason and a misogynist, Mrs Burton is a soak, Mrs Arbuthnot a gossip and a snoop. Mrs Palfrey spend much of her show more life in Burma as the wife of a colonial administrator. Dignified and stoic, she is deeply ashamed of having no visitors. Her only daughter lives in Scotland and her grandson shows no willingness to see her. Enter Ludo (a very playful name) a young aspiring author who helps Mrs Palfrey after she takes a tumble on the street near the hotel. They form a beautiful friendship and Ludo more than makes up for her absent family.
Elizabeth Taylor wrote with both compassion and mordant humour but avoided being mawkish or cruel. I cannot think of any other writer that chronicles post war England better. I originally gave this a 4-star rating because the ending felt a bit like falling off a cliff face, but this is a 5-star book.
So yeah, I was late to the party, late to appreciate the subtle genius of Elizabeth Taylor. But my mum was right, better late than never. show less

Lovely, wry account of an ambiguous little encounter between the End of Empire and Swinging London — as represented by Mrs Palfrey, a widowed Memsahib who looks "like a general in drag" and Ludo, a young novelist who works "at but not for" Harrods.

This is the first Taylor I've read — I see why people compare her to Barbara Pym. There's a lot of overlap with the mood of Quartet in Autumn, but Taylor is a bit more down-to-earth than Pym; no religion here, and not many camp flights of fancy, but a bit more interest in the nitty-gritty of class and society. And a certain amount of good old British stiff upper lip: old age may be neither attractive nor enjoyable, but if you're a Mrs Palfrey then you simply grit your teeth and make the show more best of it. show less

(Ali’s)

I gulped this down on the train between Birmingham and Reading; yes, I did read every word, but I have read this before, although I’m not sure when. Mrs Palfrey, a fine and formidable woman who can look like a Colonel in drag, is installing herself at a residential hotel as the novel opens. She observes the other inmates: pain-wracked Mrs Arbuthnot, brave Mrs Burton, fighting age until the end (and at the Day we were alerted to the fact that she shares a surname with the person who to us, surely, is the “other” Elizabeth Taylor), and the others. Mrs Palfrey hopes for a visit from her grandson but when she meets a rather Iris Murdochian young impoverished writer (with yet another feckless mother), she brings him into her show more life – and into some degree of deception. Horrors, of course, ensue. A cast of brilliantly drawn characters seen in various environments including a scream of a party, each with their horrors and their redeeming features. Although the subject matter is depressing, the book isn’t, in an odd way that is testament to the power of the author. show less

Mrs. Palfrey is an admirable woman who does the best she can in her circumstances: she is now a widow, after a perfect marriage, with enough money and mobility to stay at a residential hotel in South Kensington. A handful of other aged residents also live there.The comparison of the author to Jane Austen is spot on. Even Mrs. Palfrey, admirable as she is, is also deceitful, and claims that Ludo, a stranger who helped her, is her grandson come to dine. (He is a better choice.) Ludo is an aspiring writer who writes at Harrod's---in a room that no longer exists---so that he doesn't have to heat his small apartment.

I felt distant from the characters; I don't know if this was a decision by Ms. Taylor or a failing on her part or mine. The show more hotel's long-term residents work at keeping a sense of distance from each other; perhaps it's the British stiff-upper-lip attitude of this part of society. But even family relationships are awkward and strained. I think Mrs. Palfrey makes the widower of their group a better person; growth is always possible.

I read the reviews on IMDB of the Joan Plowright movie; it was widely described as lovely. People who adapt Jane Austen's stories frequently make them sweeter. The book is not lovely; it is sometimes humorous, sometimes brutally honest but sympathetic, sometimes sad. My first reaction to the ending was outrage; I calmed down and now feel the ending is perfect. It's not only that we don't truly know anybody; we don't really want to know anybody.

(My family used to vacation at a residential hotel in Lakewood, NJ, in the 1960s.I remember the older women would sit by the deep end of the swimming pool and complain that the children splashed too much when they jumped into the water. And that they insisted the hotel's television show The Lawrence Welk Show on Sunday nights.) show less

"Time went by.
It could be proved that it did,
although so little happened."

That's the way time passing feels to the small group of aged pensioners staying in London at the Claremont Hotel as residents. But certainly a lot more living (and some dying) was going on there than one would suppose.

Taylor writes with razor-sharp humor and aching pathos. She captures snippy comments, suppressed feelings, painful indignities, careless family ties, lackluster days. She captures the sad lamentations for spouses who left this earth first, bad hotel food, tight budgets, snobbery disguised as banter, and the outdated unchangeable personalities. And mostly, she captures the fear of further downward trajectories felt by every one of the small group show more of aged residents.

But Taylor gives more than old age tropes. These aged Claremont residents are still very much alive in spite of diminishing bodies and diminishing capital. Certainly those constraints force upon them a lot of mere watching and waiting. Yet the inflow of experiences and emotions continues, just as it always has. The heart of the residents' true tragedy is to experience this latter part of their lives among strangers.

And life now has both too much and too little time for them.

Taylor is such a consummate writer that it's delightful to pick up on the little tidbits of her astute observations. You certainly don't have to be an old geezer to enjoy this novel. It's witty, it's clever, it's sensitive, and it's mightily entertaining.

It's remarkable how she can write about even obnoxious people with compassion, though clearly depicting how obnoxious they undoubtedly are. (I'm thinking also of her novel Angel I read last year.) No one, not even our Mrs. Palfrey, is without irritating faults--that stoicism, that stiff upper lip, always proper to the point of bland remoteness. Yet, in contrast to that outer controlled exterior, Mrs. P also takes delight now and then in creating tiny amounts of calculated shock; she also instigates a major deception! Behaviors which prove she is not as bland and proper as presents herself to be. Even so, in Taylor's deft writing we see Mrs. Palfrey and all the other Claremont regulars as deserving our sincerest empathy. Just as real people in our real lives deserve. Just as we hope we deserve, especially in our old age.

All of us live the majority of our lives with a carefreeness, even carelessness, as if we ourselves will always be meaningful, part of the hubbub, the center of our warm cocoons, looking vaguely toward when we will enjoy the rich harvest of a life well-lived. Then, one day, the hubbub is elsewhere. Our well-stocked pantry is more bare than we imagined. We are alone.

Gently Taylor takes us to that place, where in spite of all, life's fundamental desires don't age out: we have the same longing we've had all our lives, to be important to someone who cares about us. show less

This was such a distressing book -- and I don’t mean that as a spoiler for the ending, but as a description of the characters and the writing style. At the same time, it’s also so very very good. An excellent novel!

Mrs Palfrey is an ageing widow who has enough money left to avoid the disgrace of a nursing home: she can take a room at the Claremont, a formerly respectable residential hotel located on a thoroughfare in London. While the hotel does cater to fly-by guests, the permanent residents are all in the same boat as Mrs Palfrey: approaching death, proud, but barely wealthy enough to maintain the status-quo.

From this setup, Taylor develops a genuinely distressing story. The elderly residents live all but fake lives: their social show more dynamic revolves around pretending that nothing is changed, that they are doing fine, that money is no object. And so their interactions become merely sustained hypocrisy where real relationships become impossible. Any family member who is still alive and who might visit becomes someone to boast about -- bonus points if they’re young and handsome, then one can really lord it over the others. The inmates are too set in their ways to admit even to themselves that their bodies are inevitably betraying them -- their appetites and their mobility cannot be seen to have diminished. In short: one-upmanship is the sole source of social status, and appearances must be kept up. This entails the saddest, most distressing aspect of the book: there is no recourse for these people, no help to be got, and it is all their own fault.

Taylor’s writing in this book is wonderful: its matter-of-fact dryness cuts mercilessly through the pretense. Taylor frequently feels compassionate about her côterie of end-of-life losers, but has no patience with their sham lives: she trains her scalpel squarely on the social niceties that cover a less-than-perfect reality, and she does so with an attitude that ranges from impish humour to absolutely brutal editorial comments that leave people's hypocrisies bare and raw. The style reminded me of Arrested Development, where characters say or do one thing, and the narrator bluntly contradicts them for tragi-comedic effect.

No part of this novel is sentimental; on the contrary: it is almost harrowing in its unflinching directness and desire for honesty. And the writing is so confident, so perfect in tone and delivery. My SO and I now have both read this, and our summary of this book goes “It’s so sad! But so good! But so sad! But so good!”. show less

Read this in one sitting. Totally enjoyed it. Even some laugh-out-loud moments. Much better than 'Angel'. A group of elderly people live in a hotel off the Crompton Road, where they more-or-less await death. Taylor's descriptions of the main characters are full of empathy but never wallowing. The story is told by the seasons of the year, but it doesn't feel like a plot device. Rather, the change in weather represents the steady marking of time, as Mrs Palfry and her companions idle away their final years. I really liked the unlikely friendship between Mrs Palfry and Ludo, who stores up all his images and thoughts about old ladies for his book. Mrs Palfry's guilty enjoyment of her secret life, not revealed to her daughter and real show more grandson, makes this a gem.

I love this book so much that after borrowing it from the library I just had to buy my own copy. And on second reading, I still think it is one of the most perfect gems of understated ferocity I have ever come across. show less