Michelle Blanchard Ardillo

How do you feel about books that start with an epigraph? Yea or nay? I generally like it, but sometimes I have no idea of its relevance until deep into the book. Not with this one, however.

Last night I finished How to Age Disgracefully by Clare Pooley. This book is VERY popular right now. I belong to two Facebook groups for readers (Currently Reading’s Bookish Friends and AARP’s The Girlfriend Book Club), and it seems like everyone has read or is reading this book. I was like number 578 on the wait list for a Kindle version at my public library. Then, this past weekend, I popped into my local branch (shoutout to Aspen Hill Public Library, Montgomery County, Maryland), and I saw that the librarian on duty was someone I knew. So, I casually sauntered over to the desk and asked nicely, “You don’t happen to have a copy of How to Age Disgracefully squirreled away back there, do you?” And this lovely man jumped up from his desk and said, “Wait, I think we do!” And just like that I moved to #1!!!

The novel’s epigraph is a quote from Dylan Thomas.

“Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day.”

That epigraph completely nails the theme of this novel. And it doesn’t take 200 pages to get there. It is right up front in your face, in the prologue, where we are first introduced to the “mismatched group of people” that make up the chaotic cast of characters of this novel. Are there too many characters? According to the multitude of reviews on Goodreads (there are as of this date and time 4,290 reviews and over 24,000 ratings!), yes, too many characters. There are lots of characters, including a dog whose name is Margaret Thatcher, and much like Six-Thirty in Bonnie Garmus’s Lessons in Chemistry, Margaret Thatcher truly does become a noteworthy character in this novel.

Pooley’s latest novel explores the invisibility of the aging population, much like the hit TV series Matlock, a legal drama starring Kathy Bates as Madeline Kingston where the main character renames herself Matty Matlock to return to the practice of law to avenge the death of her only child who died due to an addiction to opioids. Matty Matlock (the last name is the only nod to the original TV series of the same name starring the late great Andy Griffith) says in one episode that she can get the proof they need to win their case because no one pays attention to old women and she can sneak in and get what they need without calling attention to herself. It is her calling card, and in this way, along with her sharp wit and intelligence, she becomes very valuable to the law firm, climbing up the ladder episode by episode.

This is one of the things that (slightly) bothered me about this book. Daphne has a deep, dark secret that she has kept hidden for DECADES, living a quiet, invisible life where she rarely left her apartment, and suddenly, she is everywhere, shouting and bossing people around, staring down criminals, scheming and planning revenge on new enemies. Naturally, this sudden and glaring attention is going to undo her carefully orchestrated life, and her past will catch up with her. Although, the meme that is created from a viral video of her “actions” is absolutely hilarious. Hats off, Clare Pooley, on that one scene alone!

Pooley’s main character Daphne is an old woman (I feel very odd saying this because she is only—only—70, which at my current age does not seem THAT old to me) who does everything possible to call attention to herself, dressing outlandishly, brandishing a metal walking stick in the air like a sword, speaking her mind at any and every opportunity.

Overall, I enjoyed this book. One reviewer on Goodreads said that they enjoyed Pooley’s previous two novels more, that this one felt a bit too similar to those, and had the reviewer read this one first, it would have probably been a bigger hit for them. Since this IS my Pooley book, maybe I enjoyed it more than if I had read her other work first.

Speaking of being a bit similar, I did think while reading this that Pooley may have been trying to catch the tail of the phenomenonal comet known as The Thursday Murder Club, the VERY popular series by Richard Osman, with her own group of senior citizens, with their very different skill sets and past lives, banding together to accomplish their goal. I recently finished Mrs. Quinn’s Rise to Fame by Olivia Ford, which features a similar demographic, and I’m wondering how far this trend will go. British TV has warmed many hearts (and feathered many pockets) with series featuring seniors, such as comedies like As Time Goes By, Are You Being Served, Waiting for God, and Keeping Up Appearances. It appears that British literature is following suit.

Clare Pooley has an interesting backstory, becoming famous for a blog (written under a pseudonym) about becoming sober after drinking her way up to an entire bottle of wine A DAY. This journey eventually made its way into a published memoir, The Sober Diaries. I look forward to reading that, along with her two previous novels, The Authenticity Project and Iona Iverson’s Rules for Commuting (published in the UK as The People on Platform 5).

And, now, on to something new! Happy reading, everyone!