18 Mar 2013 16:43:44
In Deborah Moggach's 2004 novel, These Foolish Things, a young man runs a ramshackle hotel filled with a gaggle of pensioners. Here, the ages are reversed and the location shifted from India to Wales, but the rest of the conceit remains similar. Buffy, the elderly former actor and rake from Moggach's 1994 novel, The Ex-Wives, inherits a rickety B&B in the Welsh village of Knockton. Because nobody wants to stay in crap B&Bs any more, Buffy starts "Courses for Divorces", to teach newly single people those things they always relied upon their partner to do. Cue a parade of characters escaping unsatisfactory relationships. Moggach assembles a lively crowd, but perhaps too many people: characters are often established at more length than necessary, but rapidly disposed of once they've arrived. However, despite the uneven pace and some clunking jokes, there's all the warmth and humour you'd expect from Moggach, as well as moments of beautifully expressed insight into her lonely hearts.
