Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont (Virago Modern Classic) - Softcover

Taylor, Elizabeth

4

9,452 ratings by Goodreads

9780385279215: Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont (Virago Modern Classic)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0385279213 ISBN 13: 9780385279215

Publisher: Dial Press, 1983

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On a rainy Sunday in January, the recently widowed Mrs Palfrey arrives at the Claremont Hotel, where she will spend the rest of her days. Her fellow residents, magnificently eccentric and endlessly curious, live off crumbs of affection and an obsessive interest in the relentless round of hotel meals. Together, upper lips stiffened, they fight off their twin enemies: boredom and the Grim Reaper.

And then one day Mrs Palfrey encounters the handsome young writer, Ludo, and learns that even the old can fall in love.

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Review:

Elizabeth Taylor's exquisitely drawn character study of eccentricity in old age is a sharp and witty portrait of genteel postwar English life facing the changes taking shape in the 60s . . . Much of the reader's joy lies in the exquisite subtlety in Taylor's depiction of all the relationships, the sharp brevity of her wit, and the apparently effortless way the plot unfolds . . . Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont is, for me, her masterpiece (Robert McCrum 'the 100 best novels', Guardian)

Jane Austen, Elizabeth Taylor, Barbara Pym, Elizabeth Bowen - soul-sisters all (Anne Tyler)

Elizabeth Taylor is finally being recognised as an important British author: an author of great subtlety, great compassion and great depth. As a reader, I have found huge pleasure in returning to Taylor's novels and short stories many times over. As a writer I've returned to her too - in awe of her achievements, and trying to work out how she does it (Sarah Waters)

One of the most underrated novelists of the twentieth century, Elizabeth Taylor writes with a wonderful precision and grace. Her world is totally absorbing (Antonia Fraser)

She's a magnificent and underrated mid-20th-century writer, the missing link between Jane Austen and John Updike (David Baddiel Independent)

A wonderful novelist (JILLY COOPER)

How skilfully and with what peculiar exhilaration she negotiated the minefield of the human heart (JONATHAN KEATES)

The unsung heroine of British twentieth-century fiction (REBECCA ABRAMS, NEW STATESMAN)

A funny and honest examination of the casual cruelty we can sometimes inflict upon each other (DAILY MAIL)

Book Description:

*Shortlisted for the 1971 Booker Prize
*a humorous yet compassionate look at the world for those of whom there is a long past but little future

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