This book is about a group of pensioners who through choice
or accident end up spending their retirement in India at The Best Exotic
Marigold Hotel. The book follows several different characters in their lives
before the hotel and during their stay there. The main character, however is
the hotel itself. When the book starts the Marigold, as a retirement home,
doesn’t exist. It is just a small hotel run by a husband and wife that isn’t
doing very well. It is the brain child of two cousins, one of whom wants to get
his father-in-law out of his house. The problem is that the father-in-law isn’t
welcome at any retirement homes as he is a nuisance. Therefore, the men decide
that if no one will take him in they will have to create their own retirement
home. And the further away the better. India is chosen as they are both of
Indian descent and so have connections there.
Each of the residents has his or her own story of how they
came to be there. The story doesn’t follow each character from before the Hotel
to at the Hotel. Some we only really meet when they are there. Otherwise the
book would be super long and they’d never get there. The people we do meet at
the start are all widows who either live by themselves or in a retirement home.
At the point where we meet them they are making do in a world that is
unfamiliar to them. They have also, to a certain extent, been abandoned by
their families, those that have them.
When they reach the Hotel they club together and make do,
because that’s what they’ve always done. They probably wouldn’t know what to do
with a perfect life with nothing to worry about and everything being taken care
of by their children or other family members. The Hotel is a bit run down and
the owners are a middle aged couple who have their own problems and the chef is
an alcoholic but that’s fine. They’ll get through it together. India is a
culture shock for them with all the beggars on the streets and not being able
to drink the water but they adapt.
The spirit of the characters is what make this book. You
feel that the author has really thought about what it’s like to be alone after
having so many people in your life before either through family or through
work. Once you retire and your time is your own there’s suddenly too many hours
in the day when before there were too few. Having them go to India and be the
first residents of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel is one of the best things to
happen to them. They are surrounded by people in the same situation as them and
they can work out this new life together. One of the characters likens it to
being in boarding school and that’s what it is. Each character learns something
about themselves and can point to their stay in India as being a turning point
in their lives.
The book is slow to get going with introducing characters
and their stories but once they are all together I found it an interesting
study into how the different generations go about things. There is not a lot
happens in the book but the people keep you reading. Everyone will probably
identify with at least one of them. You follow the lives of some of the
children of the residents and how they are starting to screw up their lives
just as their parents are getting theirs together. The message I took away from
this book is that while life is short and you should make the most of it, it’s
never too late to discover who you are, to start again. But most of all, don’t
ever think that your life is over when you reach old age, it can be the
happiest time in your life.
Overall rating 4 out of 5.
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