Brutal

I can't remember where I first read of Elizabeth Taylor the author, rather than Elizabeth Taylor: Actress. I did a bit of poking around the internet, but appear to have misremembered my source so, alas, this will have to go without citation. Nevertheless, I have had several of her books on my "to read" list that I have accumulated on the NYPL website. I finally got around to reading one, Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont, which I finished this weekend.

Well. It is elegant, sparse prose; it appears to deal with frivolities - food, particularly - and societal norms, reflections. Yet it is an utterly brutal and unflinching look at old age and dying without being wanted or needed. It is quite shaking; not mean-spirited, but matter of fact and all the more horrifying for it. It's not often that a book of merely 200 pages or so is going to stick and haunt my thoughts, but this will be it. Unsurprisingly, I'm reading joyously frivolous young adult fiction to get me through the aftermath.