Barbara Peters, owner of The Poisoned Pen, calls Clare Pooley’s novel, How to Age Disgracefully, “a fun book”. You can order a copy through the Webstore, https://bit.ly/4gSYnj6.
Here’s author Dana Stabenow’s review of How to Age Disgracefully.
How to Age Disgracefully
by Clare Pooley
A London fable about five senior citizens looking for something to do other than bingo and the woman hired to organize a local seniors club who needs more help with her life than the rest of them put together. There is also Ziggy, a teenaged single father and M/Maggie/Margaret/Margaret Thatcher, a mutt suddenly orphaned when one of the club’s members dies at their very first meeting. But most of all there is Daphne, who has spent the last fifteen of her seventy years in seclusion for good reason, a woman who does not suffer fools gladly and who shakes up everyone’s lives for the better, including her own.
Fortunately there is a worthy cause to unite them. The building where the club meets is under threat of razing and redevelopment by the local council. Where will the antenatal group, the AA chapter, the child care center, not to mention the Senior Citizens Social Club meet if not there? By way of various activities, including a nativity play, a mysterious (not) character immediately dubbed Yarnsy, and a reality television show where M/Maggie/Margaret/Margaret Thatcher reveals unexpected dramatic talents…well, let’s just say everyone gets a happy ever after.
The dialogue is great and so is the situational humor, as here when Daphne buys a new phone, the previous one having been thrown into the Thames.
“I’ll need name, address bank details, date of birth, credit check, etcetera, etcetera.”
“I’m sorry, extremely young man, but we’ve only just met, and there’s no way I’m giving you all that intrusive and sensitive information. This is a standard commercial transaction.. You tell me how much that phone costs, I give you the cash, you put it in a bag, and I go home…
Two hours later, the mobile-phone salesboy had a migraine and had to take the rest of the day off work.
When Yarnsy’s latest creation appears on the statue in front of the community center and an offended local official appears to remove it—
“STOP RIGHT THERE, EDWARD FUCKING SCISSORHANDS!” came a shout. Daphne. Obviously. She was brandishing her walking stick above the heads of the crowd like a sword.
“This needs removing,” said the man, as the crowd began to protest. “It’s disrespectful.”
“This is CREATIVITY! YOU UTTER PHILISTINE!”
When Ziggy is sucked back into the local gang and adjourns to the local pub to drown his sorrows—
She steered him toward the toilets. The ladies’ toilets. Then she propped him against a sink while she filled it with cold water. She took a handful of his hair and plunged his face into the basin.
He gasped and spluttered as she pulled his head out. Then she did it again…
“How DARE you?” she said, pulling his head up and shoving his face toward the mirror, so he could see what a mess he looked. “You have been given the gift of youth, of health, of a beautiful CHILD and you are pissing it all away.” Head back in the sink. “One day you will get to my age, if you don’t get murdered before then, and you’ll realize what an honor and a privilege you had, and how spectacularly you wasted it all.”
I mean, I’d join that club.