This novel was just what I needed a good laugh, not because I was miserable but the last novel I finished although excellent had very serious undertones. I needed a complete change of pace which this certainly supplied.
Ravi Kapoor a doctor in London is fed up with his somewhat repulsive and difficult father-in-law whom is currently living with him and his wife Pauline. He is living with them as he keeps getting thrown out of old peoples homes! No one wants him and Ravi wishes he was somewhere far away and therefore not his and his wife’s problem. When his cousin Sonny an entrepreneurial business man from Bangalore, India is in London on business he and Ravi come up with what they see as a brilliant plan. They set up a retirement home currently a run down guest house into a home for the more discerning customer. Of course Norman is the first customer to move in when the plans reach realisation and he is joined by the most wonderful cast of characters, other retirees, their grown up children, the staff of both ‘Dunroamin’ and a local call centre where some of the residents make friends with young Indians trying to pretend they live in England! We are gradually told the tales and secrets of the characters in classic Debroah Moggach style; somehow both funny and touching at the same time, the highs and lows of not just retiring to a residential home but one that is abroad.
In fact most of these elderly residents seem to get a new lease of life by making this bold move and one even reads that one of them considers seventy to be the new forty. Now that is something to look forward too!
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