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Customer Reviews of Ending Up

It tells the not-so-simple story of the five retirees who live in
Hapenny-Tupenny cottage, ending up their lives in the company of
people they hardly knew at all in their working years.

Adela Bastable is the matriarch, a touching figure who has never
been loved, and who has never even been permitted to love.
("This she explained to herself as the result of her extreme
ugliness.") Adela's brother Bernard is the misanthropic hero
of the novel, a man who was forced to resign his Army commission
shortly after his disastrous marriage by a "scandalous" relationship with
Private Derrick Shortell, who is the third inhabitant of Hapenny-Tupenny Cottage;
known as "Shorty," he is the most important financial mainstay
of the household, its general factotum and servant, and almost never sober.
Marigold Pyke, a pretentious, vapid old flirt in her seventies,
and Professor George Zeyer, a crippled Central European academic
suffering from nominal aphasia, round out the cast.

Oh, do they ever have fun! Every incident of every day is
the occasion for new plotting and counter-plotting. Adela
tries to keep everything functional and warm; Bernard tries
for the very opposite, particularly with regard to Marigold;
Shorty tries to keep his supply of drink secret and safe, and
wages mild, unrelenting war against his social "superiors;"
Marigold tries to convince everyone that she is still a
beauty -- and not inexorably losing her memory;
George simply struggles to speak.

Of course, they are all headed for the grave sooner or later,
like everyone else, but one of the many brilliant strokes in
this novel is showing us how they all unwittingly rush towards
that fate much sooner than anyone could have imagined --
and that this early exit is inextricably bound up with their characters.
So this comic novel winds up being
(in some sense) a pocket tragedy, as the characters
relentlessly move towards the fate ordained by their own character.

I sometimes wonder if this novel wouldn't make a truly dazzling,
one-of-a-kind film. Of course, it would need very courageous
and very capable acting talent, bringing "ensemble acting" to a
new height. And it probably wouldn't make a lot of money, but --
so what?? :-)

The prose in this book is impeccable and lapidary, right up there
with the best efforts of H.H. Munro (Saki), Ernest Brahmah, and
Alexander Kinglake.

Highest possible recommendation!!