The idea behind this plotline is quite intriguing: a 70 year old woman left by her husband and feeling depressed, spots a black dress in a charity shop,
Scoop neck, clingy. It spoke of cigarettes and Martinis […] snug but not outrageously tight
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transformative, in a word. Wearing this dress which makes her “an alluring woman of a certain age”, Prudence sallies forth to attend funerals of women she does not know, in order to see if there is a chance of snagging herself a new partner in the form of the grieving widowers. The timing, unseemly as it may be, is apparently necessary because as Prudence’s best friend, Azra tells her, she has to move fast as competition for such eligible and newly available men, will be keen.
Despite the fun and fairly novel concept, the story feels a bit samey, if one has read a few Moggach novels, and in fact, I caught myself wondering if I was rereading one I had read before – but no, this one has only recently be released – it’s probably because Moggach novels can be quite formulaic. Same character types, same feelings, same set up and atmosphere, same descriptions. The read is never scintillating, mundane even, but usually acceptably so. Moggach’s characters are not so much likeable as pitiable; that seems to characterise her novels. She seems to delight in writing characters who are recognisable types, not complete stereotypes, realistic enough, but somehow, caricatured. She also seems to almost always try to include sex rather gratuitously, not massive amounts, but not necessary amounts either, and done with neither grace nor originality. However, the novels usually move at a good pace, there are many twists and turns in the plot to keep it moving and of interest, and despite all that said in this paragraph, reading a Moggach novel is often no great hardship.
Our protagonist seems to have had a renaissance at seventy, after her husband leaves her and her best friend betrays her (this is no spoiler, it happens at the start of the novel). Left to her own devices, she turns almost predatory in search of a new partner. Prudence is not completely without a sense of decorum,
he’s coming to tell me we’re finished. He realised he wasn’t ready for a new relationship. Who could possibly be ready, when their wife just died? How cruel I’d been, to ambush men when they were broken with grief! What a tawdry little plan it had been.
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That said, she is desperate and self-absorbed enough not to desist. For this character, good taste and good form are jettisoned without regret in order to fulfil her desire for companionship and physical intimacy. And so the novel tells the story of all Pru’s endeavours and experiments to find a new partner, and even moves the action right into the March 2020 lockdown (which will probably feature in many novels to come).
Moggach’s novels are not entirely mundane reads – there is often a strong British class element embedded in them, not overtly and often not even explicitly mentioned, but the author does write of middle-upper classes behaving quite differently from working classes, such as Pru and Calvin (her third widower, nouveau riche, but without much refinement). Regretfully, it is just a background hum, rather than social commentary or analysis, which would have been fascinating. However, it is light entertainment to read a novel of a seventy year old who does not seem to feel her age at all, and acts like a fairly air-headed twenty year old, eager for sex, romance, and largely uncaring of consequences. Pru also seems not to be plagued with the usual set of aches and pains of her age group. Pru is the mother of two grown-up children, but her behaviour is singularly unmaternal, and her relationship to her children more theoretically affectionate, than having them actually included in her life.
Moggach does occasionally include the odd good line or notion: when Pru considers being dumped, again, she thinks,
Beginnings were easy but you needed stamina for endings, and I was nearly seventy-one.
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And so, although I would not usually seek them out, when a new Moggach novel is displayed prominently on the library shelves, I would usually be willing to check it out and give it a whirl.
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