Safe Return Doubtful

British Literature – published 1971

This is a thoroughly enjoyable book about a collection of older people who have taken residence in a hotel, thereby forestalling for as long as possible a slide into bad health whether physically or mentally, and hence having to spend their remaining days in a care home.

Taylor’s strength is in describing her characters and she shrewdly uses an omniscient third person to give each of the old folks, no matter how pathetic, the dignity of a well-observed and fully described inner life.

There are not necessarily any happy endings, no resolutions, no end-of-life philosophy that contextualises their loneliness and suffering as something great and meaningful, but Taylor’s quiet humour and deft pacing never lets the book descend into sadness either.

Particularly memorable are the last two pages.

My GoodReads score 5 / 5