On the surface, this seems a straightforward story about an elderly widow – Mrs Palfrey – who moves into The Claremont Hotel as a long-term resident. When she first arrives, she mentions to one of the other residents that she has a grandson living in London, who she expects to visit, but he does not come and Mrs Palfrey cannot bear to be pitied or thought of as lonely. One day she has a fall and is helped by Ludo, an aspiring writer, and to say thank you she invites him to dinner at The Claremont. He is mistaken for her grandson, Desmond, and the two continue the charade and in the process strike up a friendship of sorts.
Although the plot sounds simple, I found this to be a novel full of depth and also wickedly funny – I laughed out loud many times. The novel looks at friendship and loneliness, our obsession with appearances, relationships and aging. I found Mrs Palfrey to be extremely well-drawn and likeable, it is very rare you get an older female character who has such depth of character and is so perceptive:
“I must not wish my life away, she told herself; but she knew that, as she got older, she looked at her watch more often, and that it was always earlier than she had thought it would be. When she was young, it had always been later.”
Ludo, much younger but just as lonely as Mrs Palfrey, at first seems to continue their acquaintance for his own gain – Mrs Palfrey has money, and he doesn’t and he uses his meeting with her as material for the book he is writing. But as their relationship develops, it is clear that they share something special between them, something stronger than a familial bond; something which makes others uncomfortable because they do not behave as society expects them to:
“And now she began to think most bitterly of Mrs Palfrey – with all that wine-drinking, and her flushed cheeks, and the young man to whom she had offered smoked salmon at five-and-sixpence a portion. They had leaned towards one another over the table, their eyes on one another’s faces, like lovers.”
My only complaint about the book was that a few of the other characters seemed a bit one-dimensional, but this is only a very minor drawback in what was overall an extremely moving, thought-provoking and funny novel.
A Literary Re-Education 