Old age is so rarely laid bare on the page, it feels like great secrets are being revealed here.

Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont is a comedy of age and manners. When widowed Mrs Palfrey sees an advertisement in a Sunday paper for the Claremont Hotel’s winter rates and excellent cuisine, she moves in, joining a coterie of ageing, permanent residents in their final hurrah.

Appearances are everything, and Mrs Palfrey finds herself in quite the drama when she introduces a strange young writer as her grandson. Now the lie must be upheld. Will she be caught out? Will her real granson appear? Will she break her hip tottering about the wet streets of London?

The novel has the closed-world feel of a play. The dialogue is witty, the observations sharp, and the author’s eye unsparing. It’s a novel about old age and one’s sense of self. The outlook is bleak: for Mrs Palfrey and her chums, life at the hotel is the last stop before the nursing home: before the ‘disaster of being old.’

Time passes slowly. Sundays are gloomy. There’s nothing to do until the next meal.

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