Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont

“As a writer, Taylor assiduously avoids sentimentality, even as the novel advances on its inexorable path toward death. It’s a sign of her total authorial control that she manages to convey the pathos of old age without veering from the comedy of her characters or the intensity of the object world she has created.” —Emma Fajgenbaum, The Monthly

“Taylor is especially brilliant on the battles waged by an aging person: against revolving doors, slippery surfaces and time itself.” —Molly Young, The New York Times

“It’s funny, compassionate and searing on the subject of loneliness in later life.” —Sarah Gilmartin, The Irish Times

“Long described as underrated. . . Taylor has increasingly been acknowledged as a major writer. . . A comic novel about the elderly, middle-class residents of a London hotel. . . [it] offers an unsparing, materialist critique of post-imperial Britain. . . Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont, in other words, isn’t simply the story of one woman’s crisis; Mrs Palfrey’s condition is the condition of England.” —Ryan Napier, Jacobin

“Elizabeth Taylor’s exquisitely drawn character study of eccentricity in old age is a sharp and witty portrait of genteel postwar English life facing the changes taking shape in the 60s . . . Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont is, for me, her masterpiece.” —Robert McCrum, “The 100 Best Novels Written in English,” The Guardian

“A darkly funny, unsentimental look at the loneliness of old age and the vicissitudes of human attachment.” —Hilma Wolitzer, The Guardian