I don't know what I was expecting from this novel, but it wasn't this quiet mediation on loneliness and old age. Really lovely in a careful way.

This was unexpectedly charming despite the feeling of doom suffusing it -- the reader always waiting for something awful to happen. It does, but there is some comfort for Mrs Palfrey that she wouldn't have had unless the events of the story had happened. The neglect of the aged is so obvious and heart-rending here, though.

A gentle novel filled with sharp observation and superbly draw characters. When Mrs Palfrey moved into the Claremont she finds herself one of a group of permanent residents who plan to see out their days within the setting. The rivalry and relationships that form are beautifully build and explored. Loved the acquired grandson Ludo.

A perfect gem of a book. Mrs. Palfrey, the latest resident of a mid-tier hotel where the elderly live out their final, quasi-independent years, is lonely and despairing of her new life. By chance, she meets a young, aspiring writer, who agrees to pretend to be her absent, never-visiting grandson to show off to the other residents. Though there are numerous comic scenes, the throughline of this book is the anxiety the formerly-on-top-of-the-world Brits feel of decolonization in general and of senescence in the specific. The residents complain about hearing Commonwealth accents on the news, about the student demonstrations they see depicted, and the loss of control they feel. A social-political novel wrapped inside a story about four residents at a hotel.

"For her part, only when she had been abroad, had she consciously thought, 'I am English.' she had kept that barrier up, she proudly remembered now...It had been her solace for homesickness, her defiance from fear, her affirmation of her origins. When she was young, it had seemed that nearly all
the world was pink on her school atlas — 'ours', in fact. Nearly all ours! she had thought. Pink was the colour, and the word, of well-being, and of optimism."

Taylor gently skewers fondness for empire and its trappings while telling a tender story about the end of life. I'm glad that the introduction to this NYRB edition pointed out some of the undercurrents of the novel concerning 1970s England that I would have missed otherwise! And kudos to NYRB for surfacing writers who I would never otherwise have heard of. I have only had one or two misses with NYRB and can't wait to read more Taylor (I have a collection of short stories somewhere)

Such a perfect landing of sharp (meaning clever and also meaning barbed) but also kind to its characters.

I actually saw the movie before I read the book, and I was a little disappointed when I finally got around to reading it. Ludo is such a phenomenal character in the film, that his lack of development in the book was disappointing. The book focuses a lot more on the residents of the Claremont, and less on the mutual relationship between Mrs. Palfrey and Ludo. I liked the book, and I think it had a lot to say, but I highly recommend the movie.

Beautifully written. I expected something light and twee but was delighted to find a writer who can really observe the human condition with empathy and humour. A latter day Jane Austen.

This wasn’t as fun and lighthearted as I expected. Was basically just a short novel about old people being lonely and without any support.