An excellent examination of the business of growing old this highly original tale centres around a retirement home set up in Bangalore with the intention of attracting British pensioners.

We are introduced to a variety of characters, from the Indian operators of the home to the incoming residents and their offspring - ranging from the unscrupulous to the exasperated - who are prepared to export their ageing parents halfway across the globe. As the new arrivals touch down on Indian soil the plot takes a breather. At that point I fet there was no plot hook, nothing specific to force the reader to read on, beyond an interest in the characters and the way they are likely to react to eachother and their new environment. Fortunately this is what Deborah Moggach does best - the development of fascinating characters through sharp and witty observation ('Look at that Mrs Greenslade, a vision in beige, so well mannered she hardly existed any more....'). There are so many of them clamouring for our attention; if anything the book was too short to accommodate them all - expand it a bit and we would have had more time to enjoy the individual stories branching off the main 'trunk' of the story. This said, everything was resolved with the help of some hectic head-hopping as the book headed for its conclusion A jolly good read, as always from Deborah Moggach. She writes the sort of lively character-based fiction that Kate Atkinson writes with such commercial success, and she has been doing it for years and years.