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A review by ilse
Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont by Elizabeth Taylor
5.0
Keeping up appearances
Brilliant, just brilliant.
My first foray into the work of the other Elizabeth Taylor propelled me up one side and down the other emotionally.
As a tragic-comical tale on aging, loneliness, loss, friendship, isolation and dignity written in a punchy and superb prose, Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont made me simultaneously chuckle because of some of Elizabeth Taylor’s delightfully understated, playful observations and gasp for air because of the bleak, devastating picture it paints of the potentially cumbersome and debilitating journey down to the grave when one has pulled the lucky straw of longevity.
Having a soft spot for hotel (and boarding house) settings in fiction ([b:In a German Pension: 13 Stories|752805|In a German Pension 13 Stories|Katherine Mansfield|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1328867468l/752805._SY75_.jpg|738933], [b:Villa des Roses|800282|Villa des Roses|Willem Elsschot|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1328701409l/800282._SY75_.jpg|786247], [b:Twenty-Four Hours in the Life of a Woman|182163|Twenty-Four Hours in the Life of a Woman|Stefan Zweig|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1172512419l/182163._SX50_.jpg|1608134], [b:Grand Hotel|733917|Grand Hotel|Vicki Baum|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1367848356l/733917._SY75_.jpg|720103], [b:Hotel du Lac|251665|Hotel du Lac|Anita Brookner|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1346713260l/251665._SY75_.jpg|687946]), the Claremont hotel in London turned out quite an unusual species: for the elderly residents of Hotel Claremont, the hotel is not of the cheerful holiday or escape sort, but serving as the penultimate residence where one is tolerated on earth. The hotel offers its guests cleaning, washing and meals (much like the ‘hotel facilities’ in a nursing home) – and like in such an old people’s home, when every day starts looking the same and one’s life is reigned by loneliness and boredom, mealtimes become inordinately important:
None wished to appear greedy, or obsessed by food; but food made the breaks in the day, and menus offered a little choosing, and satisfactions and disappointments, as once life had.
While the abilities of the residents are deteriorating, they are very well aware the next stage before the final closing chapter will only be worse. Subsequently, the residents of the hotel make a sport of pretending and desperately keep up appearances not to be send off to the waiting room for death where they will be deprived of all privacy and independence. Their microcosmic charade also includes showing their lasting import to their families and relatives to the other residents, which brings Mrs Palfrey to introduce to their circle a perfect stranger as a stand-in grandson– the actual grandson not bothering a moment to pay her a visit, her daughter too busy with her own affairs.
Mrs Palfrey’s accomplice Ludo is also in want for some family relations and even in their ersatz games finds in Mrs Palfrey features of a grandmother offering him more tenderness and affection than he experienced from his own selfish mother, despite the mutual exploitation in their relationship of which only Ludo is conscious (being an aspiring writer, Ludo will use Mrs Palfrey as material, struck by her remark that ‘the residents weren't allowed to die in the hotel’).
People are sorry for brides who lose their husbands early, from some accident, or war. And they should be sorry, Mrs Palfrey thought. But the other thing is worse.
Steeped in stoic melancholy, subtly heart-breaking. sobering and wry, garnished with sharp and witty observations on class, the ignorance and disdain of emotional needs when aging, femininity and widow(er)hood, Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont is a marvellous novel that went straight to my shelf of favourites and to the top five of books I read in 2022. Elizabeth Taylor’s writing resonated with me in a similar vein as what I read so far by Penelope Fitzgerald and Anita Brookner; a very big thank you to my friends for encouraging me to read her.
Brilliant, just brilliant.
My first foray into the work of the other Elizabeth Taylor propelled me up one side and down the other emotionally.
As a tragic-comical tale on aging, loneliness, loss, friendship, isolation and dignity written in a punchy and superb prose, Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont made me simultaneously chuckle because of some of Elizabeth Taylor’s delightfully understated, playful observations and gasp for air because of the bleak, devastating picture it paints of the potentially cumbersome and debilitating journey down to the grave when one has pulled the lucky straw of longevity.
Having a soft spot for hotel (and boarding house) settings in fiction ([b:In a German Pension: 13 Stories|752805|In a German Pension 13 Stories|Katherine Mansfield|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1328867468l/752805._SY75_.jpg|738933], [b:Villa des Roses|800282|Villa des Roses|Willem Elsschot|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1328701409l/800282._SY75_.jpg|786247], [b:Twenty-Four Hours in the Life of a Woman|182163|Twenty-Four Hours in the Life of a Woman|Stefan Zweig|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1172512419l/182163._SX50_.jpg|1608134], [b:Grand Hotel|733917|Grand Hotel|Vicki Baum|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1367848356l/733917._SY75_.jpg|720103], [b:Hotel du Lac|251665|Hotel du Lac|Anita Brookner|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1346713260l/251665._SY75_.jpg|687946]), the Claremont hotel in London turned out quite an unusual species: for the elderly residents of Hotel Claremont, the hotel is not of the cheerful holiday or escape sort, but serving as the penultimate residence where one is tolerated on earth. The hotel offers its guests cleaning, washing and meals (much like the ‘hotel facilities’ in a nursing home) – and like in such an old people’s home, when every day starts looking the same and one’s life is reigned by loneliness and boredom, mealtimes become inordinately important:
None wished to appear greedy, or obsessed by food; but food made the breaks in the day, and menus offered a little choosing, and satisfactions and disappointments, as once life had.
While the abilities of the residents are deteriorating, they are very well aware the next stage before the final closing chapter will only be worse. Subsequently, the residents of the hotel make a sport of pretending and desperately keep up appearances not to be send off to the waiting room for death where they will be deprived of all privacy and independence. Their microcosmic charade also includes showing their lasting import to their families and relatives to the other residents, which brings Mrs Palfrey to introduce to their circle a perfect stranger as a stand-in grandson– the actual grandson not bothering a moment to pay her a visit, her daughter too busy with her own affairs.
Mrs Palfrey’s accomplice Ludo is also in want for some family relations and even in their ersatz games finds in Mrs Palfrey features of a grandmother offering him more tenderness and affection than he experienced from his own selfish mother, despite the mutual exploitation in their relationship of which only Ludo is conscious (being an aspiring writer, Ludo will use Mrs Palfrey as material, struck by her remark that ‘the residents weren't allowed to die in the hotel’).
People are sorry for brides who lose their husbands early, from some accident, or war. And they should be sorry, Mrs Palfrey thought. But the other thing is worse.
Steeped in stoic melancholy, subtly heart-breaking. sobering and wry, garnished with sharp and witty observations on class, the ignorance and disdain of emotional needs when aging, femininity and widow(er)hood, Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont is a marvellous novel that went straight to my shelf of favourites and to the top five of books I read in 2022. Elizabeth Taylor’s writing resonated with me in a similar vein as what I read so far by Penelope Fitzgerald and Anita Brookner; a very big thank you to my friends for encouraging me to read her.