Clare Pooley
To learn more about the author and her works: Clare Pooley
Getting Personal with Clare
Clare Pooley first pursued a career in advertising before leaving the work-place on the birth of her third child. In 2015, Pooley began a blog, Mummy was a Secret Drinker, about her life following a resolution to give up alcohol. She blogged under a pseudonym until the announcement of her first book deal in September 2017.
Clare Pooley Novels
Videos
Discussion Questions
Discussion Questions
1. This story is told from the perspective of four main characters. Which did you like the most and why?
2. The main characters in How to Age Disgracefully are a teenaged single father, a menopausal empty-nester, and two septuagenarians. Which of these stages of life do you think is the hardest to navigate?
3. When age makes you invisible, secrets are easier to hide. Is this true? Can you think of any examples?
4. Which of the characters in the novel do you think changes the most during the course of the story?
5. Art and Daphne are both criminals. Are there mitigating circumstances? Can you forgive them?
6. Ziggy also breaks the law—getting caught up in drug dealing. Why does he do this? Does he have any other choice?
7. We never meet Ziggy’s mum. What are your impressions of her and her parenting?
8. Is Lydia’s revenge on Jeremy justified and proportionate? Should she take him back?
9. In Clare Pooley’s author’s note she says that older characters in novels are often stereotyped. Is this true? If so, what are the stereotypes you’ve noticed?
10. If you had to choose a permanent carer for Maggie Thatcher, who would it be and why?
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How to Age Disgracefully by ISBN: 9780593831496Publication Date: 2024-06-11When Lydia takes a job running the Senior Citizens' Social Club three afternoons a week, she assumes she'll be spending her time drinking tea and playing gentle games of cards. The members of the Social Club, however, are not at all what Lydia was expecting. From Art, a failed actor turned kleptomaniac to Daphne, who has been hiding from her dark past for decades to Ruby, a Banksy-style knitter who gets revenge in yarn, these seniors look deceptively benign--but when age makes you invisible, secrets are so much easier to hide. When the city council threatens to sell the doomed community center building, the members of the Social Club join forces with their tiny friends in the daycare next door--as well as the teenaged father of one of the toddlers and a geriatric dog--to save the building. Together, this group's unorthodox methods may actually work, as long as the police don't catch up with them first.
Read A-Likes
All the Lonely People by ISBN: 9781538720165Publication Date: 2021-07-13In weekly phone calls to his daughter in Australia, widower Hubert Bird paints a picture of the perfect retirement, packed with fun, friendship, and fulfillment. In reality, Hubert's days are all the same, dragging on without him seeing a single soul. Until he receives some good news. The news that his daughter is coming for a visit. Now Hubert faces a seemingly impossible task: to make his real life resemble his fake life before the truth comes out. Along the way Hubert stumbles across a second chance at love, renews a cherished friendship, and finds himself roped into an audacious community scheme that seeks to end loneliness once and for all . . . Life is certainly beginning to happen to Hubert Bird. But with the origin of his earlier isolation always lurking in the shadows, will he ever get to live the life he's pretended to have for so long?
The Brilliant Life of Eudora Honeysett by ISBN: 9780063026063Publication Date: 2020-09-08Eudora Honeysett is done with this noisy, moronic world--all of it. She has witnessed the indignities and suffering of old age and has lived a full life. At eighty-five, she isn't going to leave things to chance. Her end will be on her terms. With one call to a clinic in Switzerland, a plan is set in motion. Then she meets ten-year-old Rose Trewidney, a whirling, pint-sized rainbow of sparkling cheer. All Eudora wants is to be left alone to set her affairs in order. Instead, she finds herself embarking on a series of adventures with the irrepressible Rose and their affable neighbor, the recently widowed Stanley--afternoon tea, shopping sprees, trips to the beach, birthday celebrations, pizza parties. While the trio of unlikely BFFs grow closer and anxiously await the arrival of Rose's new baby sister, Eudora is reminded of her own childhood--of losing her father during World War II and the devastating impact it had on her entire family. In reflecting on her past, Eudora realizes she must come to terms with what lies ahead.
A Man Called Ove by ISBN: 9781476738017Publication Date: 2014-07-15Meet Ove. He's a curmudgeon--the kind of man who points at people he dislikes. He has staunch principles, strict routines, and a short fuse. People call him "the bitter neighbor from hell." Behind the cranky exterior there is a story and a sadness. So when one November morning a chatty young couple with two chatty young daughters move in next door and accidentally flatten Ove's mailbox, it is the lead-in to a comical and heartwarming tale of unkempt cats, unexpected friendship, and the ancient art of backing up a U-Haul. All of which will change one cranky old man and a local residents' association to their very foundations.
