Absolutely beautiful book about a collection of old folks who have taken residence in a hotel, forestalling for as long as possible a slide into infirmity and being forced to spend their remaining days in a nursing home. Elizabeth Taylor (no relation) has a really great feel for character and makes very generous use of omniscient third person to give every person, no matter how pathetic, the dignity of a well-observed and fully three-dimensional inner life. There are no shiny happy endings, no solutions, no end-of-life wisdom that contextualizes their loneliness and suffering as something great and meaningful, but Taylor's humor and deft pacing never lets the book descend into misery either.

If one of the great things that literary fiction can do is grant us some time living in the heads of people unlike us, Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont is one of the best examples I've read lately. Recommended!