The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel by Deborah Moggach
Review by Mirah W. (mwelday)
No doubt thinking about aging and potentially living out our final days alone can be daunting. Some people hope there will be friends and family to help care for them and that doesn’t always come to fruition. Some hope their life savings or pensions will be enough to live on comfortably and that doesn’t always come to fruition, either. In Moggach’s novel a few British senior citizens have decisions to make about where to spend their twilight years.
In the novel, the characters are looking for a retirement home for various reasons: Evelyn is a widow who does not have as much money as she thought she would have to live on; Norman has been evicted from numerous retirement homes; Muriel makes news headlines and calls into question the effectiveness of the healthcare system when she’s left unattended in a hospital for more than a day. These are just three of the characters searching for where they belong in this novel.
Norman’s son-in-law, Ravi, is at his wit’s end when he confides in his cousin Sonny about the situation in his home with Norman. After Norman’s most recent retirement home eviction he moved in with his daughter and son-in-law. Ravi is constantly annoyed by Norman and can’t stand the arrangement another day. Ravi and Sonny create a plan to open a retirement home in India where costs would be cheaper and the culture welcomes the British. The result is The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, which is probably not the best or most exotic place to be in Bangalore, India. But in spite of its shabbiness, the residents who choose to retire there (including Evelyn, Norman and Muriel whom I mentioned above) learn to appreciate the quaintness of the hotel and camaraderie they build with one another.
Moggach is a talented storyteller and I really enjoyed this book. I read it after I saw the movie and at first I was disappointed at the disparity between the two stories. But after getting several chapters into the book, I couldn’t put it down. The characters are a collection of quirky, realistic, annoying, frustrating, honest, relatable, and humbling personalities and I needed to know what would happen for each of them. And, I have to admit, I think a part of me is a little whimsical about the idea of spending my own twilight years in another country, living out my days exploring new places, eating the food, smelling the flowers. I’ve joked with my husband several times that we should retire to Thailand but maybe India wouldn’t be too bad, either…provided there’s an Evelyn I can be friends with living there, too.
