Killing Time, Love, etc and The Life Impossible

 

Only 103 pages that could have been condensed to half that. But full of marvelous Alan Bennett wit. It all takes place at Hill Topp (two p's is important) House where elderly residents occupy a retirement home. It was probably a superior mansion in it's early days, but now showing it's age. Those residents are easily spotted by their Christian names: Audrey, Margaret (both names of my aunts), Elizabeth, Violet and Phyllis. The men are mostly referred to by their surnames.

It's when Violet (Mrs Vokes) dies that there is an outing to the crematorium that is strangely one of the funniest parts. It was Woodroof who, typically, had convinced Canon Lumley that he should be the one to press the button to send the coffin through the curtains. "Nor could he be prevented from pressing the one adjacent, which fetched it back before Canon Lumley ("It's not a toy") regained control of the proceedings and sent Mrs Vokes to her final rest".

When they had left, it was one of the management who said "Pensioners. They think they own the place". Don't we? It's when covid breaks out that things change dramatically. With Mrs McBride (the boss) and Zulema (who does everything else) both in hospital that things obviously go wrong. An excellent story despite it's brief length.

"Love, etc" is the sequel to "Talking it Over". At the end of my review of the latter I said: "It's when Oliver realises that he's in love with Gillian that the book takes a massive turn. The author cleverly describes his inner turmoil. For me, I loved the first half (of the book), but the second became a bit of a soap opera. Although the writing is top drawer as usual."

Once again we have joint narrators, mainly Stuart, Oliver and Gillian. They speak to us as if we were more than casual acquaintances. Ten years have passed since we last heard from them, Oliver and Gillian are now married and have two daughters. Stuart moved to America after his divorce to Gillian, where he met and married Terri but that did not last. Back home (after a successful business in the States) he becomes involved with the married couple.

Oliver has become even more verbose than he was last time: "If not quite so Olympian or Confucian a view, then at least have some perspective, some shading, some audacious juxtaposition of pigment, OK?". (Is this just the author showing off? Once I nearly threw the book across the room). Better are those parts that involve Ellie, an assistant to Gillian's business, who cannot understand why her boss puts up with her husband. (Oliver is typically a waster, still boring us to death: "At first I took it to be an ocular disturbance possibly occasioned by a gourmandising attitude to the dothiepin".)

However, I did like the ever growing relationship between Stuart and Gillian and her children, but as in these situations, nothing is resolved. The book is suddenly over, as if the author had many more chapters but ripped them up and let us decide where they go from here. Or another book?

Grace Winters is seventy two and telling her story to Maurice. It's his letter to her at the beginning that reminds her of his mother who has recently died. Grace has been left a villa on the island of Ibiza by Christina, a friend she hardly knew. It's a bit run down, small, on a busyroad and miles from anywhere. Christina has left her a letter describing all the places Grace shoulod visit. But is Christina actually dead, they never found a body.

She meets the elderly Alberto as the letter recomends and agrees to a midnight boat ride and to go diving. "Grappling into a wetsuit, by the way, is one of the all time challenges in life. It requires the strength of an ox and the limbs of a contornionist". (Don't I know - not easy in your sixties or seventies). It's the dive that changes everything for Grace and that is where the fantasy aspects of the novel start. The lights deep in the ocean, special powers, lots of introspection and philosophy. And that is where I nearly gace up. I am just not a fan of fantasy. Add in someone truly awful who has terrible plans for the island, and a fight is on the save the heritage of Ibiza. It was only because it is so well written that I made it to the end.