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A new novel from the author of "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel", which sold nearly 300,000 copies and was made into a successful film. It follows Buffy, an actor and thrice married B&B owner, who decides to run a course for divorcees to get their lives back on track.
Synopsis
At Myrtle House, the twin beds have never been so busy... The irrepressible Russell 'Buffy' Buffery has upped sticks from London and moved to a decrepit B&B in rural Wales. He needs to fill the beds, and what better way than with 'Courses for Divorces', his new money-making wheeze.
Book Details
Publisher:
CHATTO & WINDUS
Publication Date:
14-Feb-2013
ISBN:
9780701187811
Observer review
Heartbreak Hotel by Deborah Moggach review
Helen Zaltzman the observer Sun 17 March 2013
In Deborah Moggach's 2004 novel, These Foolish Things, a young man runs a ramshackle hotel filled with a gaggle of pensioners. Here, the ages are reversed and the location shifted from India to Wales, but the rest of the conceit remains similar. Buffy, the elderly former actor and rake from Moggach's 1994 novel, The Ex-Wives, inherits a rickety B&B in the Welsh village of Knockton. Because nobody wants to stay in crap B&Bs any more, Buffy starts "Courses for Divorces", to teach newly single people those things they always relied upon their partner to do. Cue a parade of characters escaping unsatisfactory relationships. Moggach assembles a lively crowd, but perhaps too many people: characters are often established at more length than necessary, but rapidly disposed of once they've arrived. However, despite the uneven pace and some clunking jokes, there's all the warmth and humour you'd expect from Moggach, as well as moments of beautifully expressed insight into her lonely hearts.