The Little Old Lady Who Broke All The Rules by Catharina Ingelman-Sundberg

Pensioners Behaving Badly

review by Maryom

Life at Diamond House Retirement Home in Stockholm isn't turning out to be as much fun as Martha and her friends expected. The meals are awful, they're never allowed out and bedtime is 8 o'clock. In fact if TV documentaries are to be believed, they'd be better off in prison! When the management introduce even more cut-backs, Martha and her friends decide it's time to take action. Fuelled by Martha's secret stash of cloudberry liquor, they hatch a plan to break out of the care home and live life to the full, even if it does mean taking to crime....

If you thought all Swedish crime novels were grim and gritty, think again. For fans of Last Tango in Halifax or Waiting for God, this is a delightful, fun tale of pensioners fighting back and refusing to accept that old age brings a life of monotonous passivity, sipping weak coffee glued to daytime TV. Sipping champagne and living in luxury is more their style than the penny-pinching cost-cutting style of Diamond House and its management. They're not going down without a fight - and even when things don't quite go the way they'd expected, Martha always comes up with another, better plan.Their escapades bring lots of laughs and excitement, and even a little romance, into their lives, proving you're never too old for fun.
I know a few elderly ladies who lunch and attend water aerobics classes at the local gym for whom this would be ideal but it will appeal to a far wider readership. You just might never see your old granny in the same way again.

Martha is just the sort of little old lady I want to be. Off to stock up on the cloudberry liquor!

Maryom's Review - 4.5 stars
Publisher - Pan Books
Genre - Humour, Crime

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