Little Apple book of the week: The Carer by Deborah Moggach

This is a clever funny novel about middle age, and middle-class angst in modern Britain.

Moggach is well known for her witty depictions of older age from her novel The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.

Here she deals with the final difficult years of old age, the indignities and the downfalls of a failing body.

She looks at the dilemma of adult children who end up either doing the caring or paying someone else to do it. The book is not just about the practical difficulties but also the emotional challenges. Phoebe and Robert are the siblings whose father is in need of a carer. They have a tricky relationship with each other, as they both pursue “artistic” paths and each feels undervalued by the other and by their father. Although they are reaching 60, they both yearn for acknowledgement and praise from him. He has been a charismatic and clever professor of physics who felt like he really contributed to the world and they don’t feel they have ever really contributed.

He was often absent during their childhood. In a clever twist, the reason for this is revealed and they then have to reassess their memories and perceptions. Strangely, this brings them closer together.  

Mandy is introduced as the carer and the very fact their father gets on so well with her causes jealousy and they become suspicious. After all, they knew little about her apart from “she arrived with her orange teapot and Marigold gloves, their saviour from Solihull.”   

When James, the elderly professor, recounts his trip to Nandos and the “hoot “ he has with Mandy, his carer, we can recognise so much about modern life and outdated snobbery. The escapades and characters along the way really make this book entertaining, from Torren, the man in the woods, to Farida, Robert’s terrifying and very withering wife.

Moggach is an acute observer of social interaction. We can cringe along with her characters and at the same time want to shake them out of their hang ups and ingrained attitudes.  A great novel all round and one for reading groups too.

Philippa Morris

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