I have to confess: I want to grow up to be Daphne “Smith” in How to Age Disgracefully, by Clare Pooley, though I suspect I’m already too late to achieve her style and her panache (not to mention her backstory). While there are other wonderful characters in this book, from Lydia, the middle aged woman who’s “running” the local senior center (“running” in quotes because she’s far from in charge for most of the book), to Art, the former actor and current kleptomaniac, to Ziggy, the teenage single father, it’s really Daphne who’s the heart and soul of the book, who makes things happen, and what a fabulous person she is!
The book is tremendous fun, even more fun than the description of the plot might suggest. In fact, you might read the summary of the plot and think you’ve read this story before, or seen it in a dozen Hallmark movies, but trust me, you haven’t. Sure, there’s a building that’s a combined senior citizen center and day care (already you’re thinking it’s too cute for words, but stay with me here), and the building is in imminent danger of being sold by the city to a private buyer who’s interested in making condominiums from it, and sure, the senior citizens join forces and work with the children in the day care (not to mention a dog who’s passed around among three characters) to save the building, and that all feels like a cliche, but what lifts this plot above the banal is the characters and the unique way they interact to make this happen.
The building is in bad shape to begin with. When the ceiling falls in on one of the senior citizens, one who’s in a wheelchair, no less, and she subsequently dies (not, as it turns out, from the impact with the ceiling, though that hardly matters), the local council decides the building has to go, never mind how many different groups need and depend on it. It’s possible that the council had already made a deal with a developer to sell the building, but the disaster just makes it easier for them to justify it.
While the rest of the oddball group of seniors, and Lydia, who’s only just started running the program and is seriously lacking in self-esteem, seem resigned to the thought that this place is going to be sold out from under them, Daphne is not about to stand by and be resigned to anything. She has just turned 70 and has just started to emerge from her self-imposed isolation, and she has her goal of making friends written on her whiteboard at home, and she is determined that she’s not going to have her best chance of integrating into society ripped out from under her.
When you first meet Daphne, you could be excused for thinking she’s the equivalent of one of Fredrik Backman’s irascible old ladies (a la Britt Marie), someone who’s shut herself away from the world and needs to warm up and discover love and friendship again. She is, after all, irascible, blunt to a fault, and wildly opinionated. She has no family, no friends, and no connections to anyone outside of her beautiful home. And I have to say that she does change over the course of the book, opening up to other people, getting involved in their problems and solving them in her own unique way (and I wouldn’t dream of spoiling the fun by describing what her unique way involves), but do not expect her to turn into a sweet old lady no matter how much she becomes entangled in other people’s lives.
Her energy pervades the book and provides a lot of the humor and liveliness of the plot. Yes, the seniors work with the day care kids to perform a nativity play that the council members come to watch, in the hopes that they’ll be sufficiently charmed or shamed that they’ll keep the building, but this goes sideways in a hilarious and painful way. And yes, there is a television show with a prize that’s large enough to pay for the needed repairs and maintenance of the building, and Art trains Maggie, the dog (also known as Margaret Thatcher, Margaret and M, depending on who’s taking care of her), so they can perform in this show and hopefully win, but this doesn’t quite go the way anyone expects either. And yes, Lydia gets revenge on her patronizing and philandering husband with the help of the group, but that, too – engineered by Daphne – is unlike any other kind of wifely revenge you’ve seen before.
You know a book like this is going to have a happy ending, but you don’t know exactly how you’re going to get there, given the characters involved. That’s also part of the fun. Once you put yourself in Daphne’s all too capable hands and launch yourself into this book, you’ll be in for a great time, lots of laughs and twists and turns before you reach the satisfying climax. You’ll probably want to age as disgracefully as these characters yourself, especially Daphne.
Bookskill 