How to Age Disgracefully

An adventurous, madcap novel about a group of rebellious British pensioners who must fight to keep their community center ‘hangout’ open.

 

In How to Age Disgracefully, Clare Pooley delivers another off-beat comedy--with a hopeful message--that brings together a cast of quirky, raucous British pensioners whose lively antics will charm readers.

 

The story is set amidst a London-Metro community center in need of revitalization—literally and figuratively. A roof collapse kills the headmistress. Lydia, a 53-year-old wife and mother--and a once in-demand food stylist who is suffering a mid-life crisis--has been hired as the facility’s new Senior Citizens’ Social Club. However, a ceiling collapse kills one of their members during the first meeting. In addition to stepping up to establish the club, Lydia and the group also take on “Maggie Thatcher,” the “ugly-looking,” now orphaned dog of the deceased woman.

 

The small club is comprised of septuagenarians who are vastly different in backgrounds and temperaments who are in search of adventure. The group includes a former businesswoman-turned-loner with secrets; an aging actor with kleptomaniac tendencies, who’s tired of playing grumpy old men and dead bodies; a retired paparazzo; a hardcore knitting addict; and woman who is ‘pushy,’ in every sense of the word, including how she navigates her walker. Lydia learns that managing the health and safety of this less-than-sedate group--on a cash-strapped budget--is no easy task. And when the town threatens to bulldoze their hangout, the group rebels in hilarious ways—complete with help from kids at the nursery school, housed in the same facility.

 

Readers are in for great fun, traveling along with Pooley’s (The Authenticity Project, Iona Iverson’s Rules for Commuting) assembly of madcap characters who refuse to succumb to age—or play by the rules

 

How to Age Disgracefully by Clare Pooley

Pamela Dorman Books/Penguin, $29.00 hardcover, 352 pages, 9780593831496

Publishing Date: June 11, 2024 

To order this book on INDIEBOUND/Bookshop.Org, link HERE

 

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review as originally published on Shelf Awareness (July 5, 2024), link HERE 

Iona Iverson's Rules for Commuting

An uplifting, immensely entertaining novel about how strangers on a commuter train becomes unlikely friends via a shared near-death experience. 

In the world today, many people tend to live anonymously, in their own personal microcosms. However, in Iona Iverson’s Rules for Commuting, British author Clare Pooley brings people together--strangers--in such a fun, spirited way that it’s bound to spark readers to expand their worldview.

 

This endearing novel, told from the points of view of an ensemble cast of vividly drawn characters, starts on a London commuter train. At the center of it all is Iona Iverson, a vibrantly quirky, 57-year-old magazine advice therapist--an observant creature of habit with job security issues--who leaves Bea, her significant other, and sets off to work with her beloved French bulldog, Lulu. Every day, Iona and Lulu sit in the same carriage--usually in the “seventh aisle,” seat “number three”--as the train traverses ten stops over 36 minutes from Hampton Court to Waterloo Station. In her mind, Iona assigns clever pet names to the seasoned commuters with whom she daily co-exists, but never speaks to. This includes “Impossibly-Pretty-Bookworm” and “Mr.-Too-Good-to-beTrue.” The other passengers, likewise, do the same—Iona is referred to by one as “Rainbow Lady” and another as “Crazy Dog Woman.”

 

One fateful day, a man who doesn’t normally ride the 8:06 a.m. train--whom Iona bills as a “Smart-But-Sexist-Manspreader,” who talks too loudly on his mobile phone and refers to his wife as “the ball and chain”--boards Iona’s carriage. He dresses exquisitely but has his look “ruined” because he displays an “extraordinary sense of entitlement which only really comes with being white, male, heterosexual and excessively solvent.” When he starts choking on a grape from his fruit salad, the normal, everyday order of the commute is upended. A medically capable oncology nurse, Sanjay--who has the hots for the “Impossibly-Pretty-Bookworm” but lacks romantic confidence--performs the Heimlich maneuver on the “Manspreader.” Sanjay’s heroic, life-saving act serves as a catalyst that suddenly transforms the travelers from strangers into friends. Over the course of the story, the soul-filled truth of each person connected to the near-death experience is revealed. The stereotyping of appearances can be very deceiving.

 

As in her previous novel, The Authenticity Project, Pooley’s grasp on the constraints and longings of the human condition proves immensely entertaining. Readers will be charmed by this uplifting, hopeful story rife with tender insights. Traveling with Iona Iverson is a literary journey well worth taking.

 

Iona Iverson’s Rules for Commuting: A Novel by Clare Pooley

Pamela Dorman Books (Penguin Books), $27.00 hardcover, 352 pages, 9781984878649

Publishing Date: June 7, 2022

To order this book on INDIEBOUND link HERE

 

NOTE: To read this review as published on Shelf Awareness for the Book Trade (April 14, 2022 ), link HERE

 

NOTE: To read a condensed version of this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (June 6, 2022), link HERE

 

The Thursday Murder Club

In this clever, cozy whodunnit, four residents of a British retirement community wield their crime-solving powers to catch a killer.

With The Thursday Murder Club, British TV personality Richard Osman (The World Cup of Everything) has crafted a very funny cozy mystery set in an upscale assisted living community in bucolic Kent, England.

 

In the luxury facility, four elderly residents--each retired, sharp and energetic--meet once a week in the Jigsaw Room, where they covertly gather to crack actual cold case murders. The group was founded by resident Elizabeth, a shrewd and devious former spy, and Penny, a retired police detective inspector who provided the cases to solve. With Penny now in a coma, however, Elizabeth keeps the club in session, continuing to work cold cases with other fellow residents and mystery aficionados. They include dapper Ibrahim, a psychiatrist; brassy, tattooed Ron, a former trade union official; and unassuming Joyce, a nurse whose interspersed diary commentaries enlighten readers to the often zany inner workings of the club.

 

When a real-life murder happens at the facility--the bludgeoning of the builder who constructed the retirement community--the club and its members employ their offbeat skills and talents to root out the killer. They skillfully manipulate the help of a 26-year-old female police constable--an ambitious transplant from London--and her Detective Chief Inspector boss, who follow a host of leads and red herrings.

 

Osman's suspenseful, complex and deeply entertaining storytelling--along with rich characterizations depicting the quirky absurdities and power of pensioners--transforms darker themes of murder and crime-solving into smart, clever fun.

 

The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman

Pamela Dorman Books, $26.00 Hardcover, 9781984880963, 368 pages

Publication Date: September 22, 2020

To order this book on INDIEBOUND, link HERE

 

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (October 2, 2020), link HERE

The Authenticity Project

This is a fun, clever, very modern story offering a poignant message of hope!

A notebook created for the purpose of confessing intimate, personal truth turns British strangers into friends as they form an unlikely bond of trust.

Online, everyone's lives look happy and perfect, which makes Clare Pooley's (The Sober Diaries) charmed novel, The Authenticity Project, a fresh, welcome and necessary change of pace.

Monica is a single, 37-year-old Brit who gave up her corporate law to open a London café. She discovers a simple exercise book left behind in her coffee shop, with three words etched on the cover: "The Authenticity Project." The first page reads: "Everyone lies about their lives. What would happen if you shared the truth instead...? Not on the internet, but with those real people around you?"

Intrigued, Monica learns the book was initiated by 79-year-old Julian Jessop, who committed his truth to its pages. Julian expresses the deep-seated loneliness he's experienced for five years, since the loss of his wife, Mary, whom he appreciated only once she was gone. Julian created the Authenticity Project to purge his own feelings and deliberately left the book with his story behind, hoping that whoever read his entry would be inspired to share their own story in its pages and then leave the book for others to do the same.

Monica searches for Julian online and discovers he is a famous portrait painter. In the meantime, she leaves the notebook, with her entry added, in a local wine bar. It lands with a cocaine addict, Hazard, who takes it with him as he sobers up on a remote island in the South China Sea. What ensues is a clever story of how the notebook travels from person to person, six strangers who ultimately discover each other and form bonds of commonality, friendship and love.

The Authenticity Project: A Novel by Clare Pooley

Pamela Dorman Books, $26.00 Hardcover, 9781984878618, 368 pages

Publication Date: February 4, 2020

To order this book on INDIEBOUND, link HERE

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review as published via Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (February 7, 2020), link HERE

To read the longer form of this review as published on Shelf Awareness for the Book Trade (January 7, 2020), link HERE

You Me Everything

An idyllic summer vacation to France becomes a turning point for a 33-year-old woman, her ex and their 10-year-old son.

Catherine Isaac is the pen name for British author Jane Costello (Summer Nights at the Moonlight Hotel), who chose a pseudonym for her American debut, You Me Everything. In Manchester, England, 22-year-old Jess is deep in labor. While facing the agony of childbirth with her mum at her side, Jess is furious that her boyfriend, Adam--a man whom Jess fell in love with in college, who is the baby's father--is markedly absent. By the time Jess cradles son William in her arms, Adam surfaces, reeking of stale booze and another woman's perfume. 

The timeline then leaps ahead 10 years. Jess, a teacher of creative writing at a local college, is a single mother. Adam--never wanting a child or to settle down--lives luxuriously, managing a beautiful hotel in the hills of Southwestern France. He is "not a neglectful father," Jess says. "He pays his maintenance on time, remembers William's birthday and Skypes when he says he will. But our son is no more than a small piece in the jigsaw of Adam's colorful life."

It is Jess's mother who insists that William needs to have a more substantial relationship with his father. Mother and son then make the long journey to Château de Roussignol, Adam's stomping ground. There she hopes free-spirited, fun-loving Adam and inquisitive, bright William will finally form a tighter bond. What ensues is a tender and reflective story that covers a span of five weeks.

This is a multi-layered, heartbreaking story of abiding love. Isaac's graceful, nuanced storytelling gains an unexpected depth and clarity readers are sure to find riveting. 

You Me Everything: A Novel by Catherine Isaac

Pamela Dorman/Viking, $26.00 Hardcover,  9780735224537, 368 pages

Publication Date: May 1, 2018

To order this book on INDIEBOUND, link HERE



NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (May 15, 2018), link HERE

Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine

An isolated young woman is liberated from a sad, damaged past via the unexpected kindness and caring of new friends.

Thirty-year-old Eleanor Oliphant is a creature of habit who keeps to herself. Plagued with a facial scar and often donning white gloves to conceal flares of psoriasis, the bright, articulate yet lowly office worker lives alone in a small Glasgow flat. She has managed to survive and circumvent the horrors of her early life--including stints in foster care--by taking comfort in books, doing crossword puzzles, watching the BBC, having a weekly chat with her cruel and demeaning "Mummy" and indulging in vodka on a regular basis.

When Eleanor develops a crush--from afar--on a singer in a local rock band, she embarks on a self-improvement crusade that includes hilarious firsts in bikini waxing, manicures and becoming techno-literate in computers and smartphones. Along the way of her transformation, she crosses paths with warmhearted Raymond, who works in the IT department of her company. As the two are leaving the office one day, they stop to help an elderly man who has collapsed in the street. This simple act upends Eleanor's life in enlightening and challenging ways.

Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine, Gail Honeyman's intriguing, hopeful first novel, explores the power of kindness and how unexpected friendships can liberate lives. Eleanor's lovable, eccentric and original narrative voice is entrancing. It draws readers fully into her damaged, unconventional psyche as she is forced to deal with a deeply repressed past and come to grips with who she is, and who she'd like to be.

Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman

Pamela Dorman Books/Viking, $26.00 Hardcover, 9780735220683, 336 pages

Publication Date: May 9, 2017

To order this book on INDIEBOUND, link HERE

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (June 9, 2017), link HERE

Paris for One and Other Stories

An entertaining novella and eight stories about women who are liberated--often unexpectedly--from the stagnancy of life.

In Paris for One and Other Stories, Jojo Moyes (One Plus One) presents a novella and eight short stories about lonely, often disillusioned women liberated from the stagnancy of life. 

In the title story, Nell--a 26-year-old Brit whose friends believe she "has never had a wild moment in her life"--plans a romantic, Parisian weekend getaway with her beau, only to be stood up at the 11th hour. Thus, Nell takes an uncharacteristic leap and sets off alone--launching a journey of self-discovery that leads to adventure and new love. 

The eight other tales deal with women at various ages and stages struggling to make sense of their choices and relationships. A woman finds a cell phone and revels in receiving intimate texts from a stranger. A lonely wife is lured by a slice of freedom amid the oppressiveness of marriage and the burdens of domesticity. A businesswoman's life is transformed when she literally slips into someone else's shoes. A pragmatic hard-working wife, struggling to make ends meet, longs for a new winter coat. A dinner party forces a once-adulterous wife to reconcile her feelings for an old flame. A surprise weekend getaway will either make or break a marriage. A media star's reputation comes undone via Twitter. A robbery in a jewelry store spices up the life of a salesgirl.

This entertaining collection highlights Moyes at her smart, clever best, as most of the stories end with an unexpected twist sure to satisfy readers looking for brief, pleasurable escapes.

Paris for One and Other Stories by Jojo Moyes

Pamela Dorman Books/Viking, $25.00 Hardcover, 9780735221079, 288 pp

Publication Date: October 18, 2016

To order this book on INDIEBOUND, click HERE

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (October 28, 2016), link HERE

The Lemon Orchard

Some losses we never get over. And when a parent loses a child, grief becomes all the more profound. In The Lemon Orchard, prolific author Luanne Rice explores this experience with creative compassion telling the story of Julia Hughes, a mother whose 16 year-old daughter, Jenny, dies in a car crash that also claims the life of Jenny's father and Julia's husband, a man whom she was in the process of divorcing.

Five years after the deaths, Julia, a professor of cultural anthropology at Yale University, is still unable to shake the loss. But when a beloved aunt and uncle ask her to house-sit for their Malibu property and lemon orchard, Julia packs up with her beloved dog and heads west. 

The natural, sensory beauty of the Santa Monica Mountains serves to intensify Julia's memories of Jenny and stir her presence. And when Roberto, the manager of the lemon orchard takes an interest in Julia--and vice-versa--the two, from different cultures, connect and bond through their shared pain of losing daughters. In Roberto's case, his daughter was lost and never found during their illegal immigration from Mexico to the United States. Julia and Roberto begin to fall in love, which inspires a renewed sense of purpose in Julia as she becomes determined to find answers about Roberto's daughter.

Alternating points of view lend intimacy to the romantic elements and suspense of the narrative. Rice has written a tender portrait of grief and loss that ultimately becomes a gateway to hope and healing, love and reinvention.

The Lemon Orchard by Luanne Rice

Pamela Dorman Books,  $27.95, Hardcover, 9780670025275 , 304 pp

Publication Date: July 2, 2013

To order this book via INDIEBOUND link HERE

Note: This review is a reprint and is being posted (in a slightly different form) with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (7/12/13), click HERE

Looking for Me

Theodora Grace Overman, aka "Teddi," always loved restoring old furniture. As a teenager, this farm girl with a big dream rebelled against her mother's push for secretarial school and ran away from her rural Kentucky home, setting off to Charleston, South Carolina where she eventually opens a shop dedicated to the refurbishing of antiques.

"...Old furniture speaks to me," says Teddi. "The older it is, the more it has to say." Such is the case with Teddi's life. In 1993, when the workaholic finds herself successful but still single at the age of 36, she begins to reflect on the lost years while trying to understand the people she left behind: a mother who never understood her daughter's aspirations; a father who returned from war a completely changed man; and an enigmatic younger brother, Josh, whose love of nature and rescuing animals may have led to his mysterious disappearance and a final letter he left behind that read, "Don't come looking for me." 

When Teddi's mother takes ill, Teddi returns to her rural Kentucky home where strange occurrences begin to emerge that indicate Josh might still be alive. Hoffman flashes back to events from Teddi's childhood in the 1960s and 70s, delving into the haunted mysteries of the past in order to shape the contours of these interconnected, yet sadly detached lives. As in Hoffman's debut novel, Saving CeeCee Honeycutt, Southern wit, charm and down-home characters add levity to this story of loss and broken hearts that are ultimately restored with love, hope and remembering. 

Looking for Me by Beth Hoffman

Pamela Dorman Books, $27.95 Hardcover, 9780670025831, 368 pp

Publication Date: May 28, 2013

To order this book via INDIEBOUND link HERE

Note:  This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (6/4/13), click HERE

The Last Letter from your Lover

London 1960: Jennifer Stirling wakes in a hospital to learn that she has survived a terrible car accident. She is the wife of a wealthy business magnate who provides Jennifer with a life some women only dream of. The problem is, Jennifer can't recall who she is or who she was - until she discovers a heartfelt love letter signed with the letter "B," asking her for forgiveness and to leave her husband. It proves to be just the jolt Jennifer's memory needs in reconstructing the past and a love-affair she only half-remembers.

Jojo Moyes (Sheltering Rain, The Peacock Emporium) structures this captivating romance in chapters named for the months surrounding the fateful accident in 1960 and weaves a tale that ultimately unravels in 2003. A modern day journalist, Ellie, caught in the throes of a complicated love affair of her own, discovers love letters misfiled in a newspaper archive. Searching for meaning in her own life and a story that might save her career, she sets out to find and reunite the lovers immortalized on the page. But is it too late?

At times, the shifts of chronology might make the reader feel as off-balance as Jennifer in piecing together the facts that resulted in the accident and its tragic aftermath. But Moyes is an intelligent, engaging storyteller who lures the reader through the complexities of the narrative via dramatic twists and turns of missed opportunities, glitches that keep lovers apart and cliff-hangers that build up reader expectation only to deliver the unexpected.

The Last Letter from Your Lover by Jojo Moyes
Pamela Dorman Books, Hardcover, 978-0670022809, 400 pp.
Publication Date: July 19, 2011
To order this book via INDIEBOUND link HERE

Please note: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (7/19/11), click HERE

Saving CeeCee Honeycutt

“When a chapter of your Life Book is complete, your spirit knows it’s time to turn the page so a new chapter can begin. Even when you’re scared or think you’re not ready, your spirit knows you are.”  (Saving CeeCee Honeycutt by Beth Hoffman)

It's 1967 in Willoughby, Ohio, and Cecelia Rose (CeeCee) Honeycutt is no ordinary 12 year-old. Largely abandoned by her father, CeeCee emerges as her mother's self-imposed caretaker - a woman with mental illness who clings to a shining moment in 1951 when she was crowned Miss Vidalia Onion Queen. When CeeCee's mother is killed by a speeding ice cream truck, it would appear as though things have gone from bad to worse, and CeeCee's world has irrevocably been torn apart. But what underlies the tragedy is a miraculous saving grace in the form of CeeCee's elderly great-aunt, "Tootie" Caldwell, a woman whom CeeCee has never met.

Setting off in her aunt's shiny red Packard convertible, which is as colorful as her personality, CeeCee is whisked away to live with well-to-do Tootie in her historic, Greek-revival style home on Gaston Street in Savannah, Georgia. It seems a magical place, and CeeCee wonders if it is providential that she has arrived in the very city to which her mother had always aspired to return. This coming-of-age story depicts a transitional summer for a wounded, frightened young girl who is anchored back to the world via a cast of strong, Southern women - each a survivor in her own right and each with her own unique blend of eccentricities and challenges in the class-conscious, racially-charged south.

It is through the wit and wisdom of these likeable, well-drawn characters--and the climax of the story that centers around a robbery attempt--that CeeCee is rescued and buoyed by the love that ultimately surrounds her. Hoffman has a real flair for turning out lively metaphors that leap off the page, where tight, concise scenes transform this bittersweet story into one full of comfort and hope.

Saving CeeCee Honeycutt by Beth Hoffman
Pamela Dorman Books, Hardcover, 9780670021390, 320pp.
Publication Date: January 12, 2010
To order this book via INDIEBOUND link HERE