Killing Time

by Alan Bennett

We have a choir and on special occasions a glass of dry sherry. It's less of a home and more of a club and very much a community.

Presided over by the lofty Mrs McBryde, Hill Topp House is a superior council home for the elderly. Among the unforgettable cast of staff and residents there's Mr Peckover the deluded archaeologist, Phyllis the knitter, Mr Cresswell the ex-cruise ship hairdresser, the enterprising Mrs Foss and Mr Jimson the chiropodist. Covid is the cause of fatalities and the source of darkly comic confusion, but it's also the key to liberation. As staff are hospitalised, protocol breaks down. Miss Rathbone reveals a lifelong secret, and the surviving residents seize their moment, arthritis allowing, to scamper freely in the warmth of the summer sun.

'Violet? She'll be having a little lie-down,' said Mrs McBryde. 'She likes to give her pacemaker a rest. I'll rout her out.'

Genres: Fiction, Humor, Audiobook, Contemporary, Novella, Short Stories, Literature

Audible Audio

First published November 7, 2024

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name.

Alan Bennett is an English author and Tony Award-winning playwright. Bennett's first stage play, Forty Years On, was produced in 1968. Many television, stage and radio plays followed, along with screenplays, short stories, novellas, a large body of non-fictional prose and broadcasting, and many appearances as an actor. Bennett's lugubrious yet expressive voice (which still bears a slight Leeds accent) and the sharp humour and evident humanity of his writing have made his readings of his own work (especially his autobiographical writing) very popular. His readings of the Winnie the Pooh stories are also widely enjoyed.

Reviews

[Cecily · Rating 4 out of 5]

My husband grew up in an old people’s home, and lived there till we married, so some of this felt very familiar, especially the disjointed conversations and weird tangents, of which there are many.
“That was another thing that was always going missing, what they were talking about.”
That, and the fact it’s typical Alan Bennett: memorable characters bordering on caricature, brought together in an institution, with tragi-comic dialog, repressed sexual tension (occasionally expressed in taboo ways), slowly-revealed secrets, a chiropodist, a priest, mortality, and a decent plot.

This humorous novella is set in Hill Topp (double p) whose manager has delusions of grandeur and light-fingers where trinkets of the deceased are concerned. The first half establishes the characters, their quirks, and how they interact with each other. Any one of them would be a good subject for one of Bennett’s Talking Heads. Then Covid strikes, and it becomes more plot-oriented, with deaths and surprises.

Keep busy

My late mother-in-law was very conscious that those who retired and moved into the home she ran were of two broad types: those who seized the opportunities to pursue hobbies and be socially engaged invariably stayed mentally and physically able far longer than those who put their feet up and just stared at the telly.

The residents of Hill Topp have hobbies including knitting, gossiping, one-upmanship, gardening, fundraising, sex, and jigsaw puzzles. I was amused at Miss Rathbone being reduced to doing jigsaws made of anatomy illustrations, designed as a (failed) teaching aid. Of course, Google demonstrates that anatomy jigsaws are indeed a thing, and jigsaw puzzles are not a bad analogy for this story.


Image: Four 1000-piece anatomical jigsaws: brain, heart, skeleton, body (Source)

Freedom in confinement?

Although care homes limit residents’ lives in some ways, they’re often of an age when they care less and less about what others think.

Woodruff’s life lessons make the point:
1. “There’s no need to be nice. Why? Because it gets you no further.”
2. “If you drop anything on the floor don’t pick it up. Why? Because the statistics of people having strokes go up the more one bends down… ‘So who picks it up?’... ‘Somebody else.”
3. “If you don’t want a stroke don’t linger in the lav.”
4. “Don’t go diddling your hands every five minutes either whatever the government says. Hygiene is overrated.”
5. “And avoid rhubarb.”

• They reminded me of Jenny Joseph’s poem, “Warning”, better known by its first line, When I am an old woman I shall wear purple, which you can read HERE.

• See also Bennett’s Allelujah!, set in the geriatric ward of a hospital, and which I reviewed 4*, HERE.

Quotes

• “His flashing nowadays was less than fluent.”

• “He liked her. She didn’t like him especially but she had invested what was left of her life to this institution and she needed to make it work.”

• “Gus’s coterie found their misbehaviour unexpectedly rejuvenating. After all, sex was a secret and secrets did wonders for the spirits.”

• “We’re all lost property now.”

• “Covid now permitting church services while at the same time thinning the congregations available to attend them.”

• “Those who had the disease and lived felt superior to those who had escaped it.”

[Mike Finn · Rating 3 out of 5]

I listened to 'Killing Time' in a single sitting (it's only sixty-nine pages / 119 minutes long). At the end, I was at a bit of a loss to describe what I'd been listening to. I knew what it wasn't - a cutely humorous novella about old people in council care home coping with the impact of COVID - but I had more trouble saying what it was.

I knew that I had been completely mislead by the publisher's summary. This was not a joyful tale in which the surviving residents "…scamper freely in the warmth of the summer sun." This was a matter-of-fact description of a set of old people whose lives are mostly behind them. Their identities have been reduced down to a few personality quirks garnished with a scattering of possessions that are like driftwood from who they used to be, beached with them when the tide of their lives ebbed and ran them aground in a council-run care home. This was not a cosy narrative It romanticised nothing. It didn't set out to entertain or to push a message. It was a mostly dispassionate description of the people in the home and the impact of COVID on their lives.

There is a little bit of humour and a lot of undramatic, mostly ungrieved, deaths. The realities of being so old that you can no longer take care of yourself and mostly have no energy or motivation to take care of anyone else are well observed. There is a character who finally reveals things about her life that she's previously kept secret but, while the disclosures are dramatic and historically interesting, it's clear that the woman revealing them sees them as something that happened in another life. Who she was then and who she is now are linked only by memory and a recognition of decline.

'Killing Time' is a rare thing - a book about being old written by someone who is very old - Alan Bennett was ninety when it was published. The details of the life in the care home felt real and unapologetically honest. The fatal impact of COVID was treated in a shrugging 'Death happens' way. The overall feeling I was left with was that, if you live long enough, there is so little left of who you used to be that who you were becomes either a story that you tell yourself and others or just another thing that you let go of because you don't need it any more.

[Alan (The Lone Librarian) Teder · Rating 5 out of 5]

Senior Noir
A review of the Faber & Faber (UK) hardcover (November 7, 2024).

After all, sex was a secret and secrets did wonders for the spirits. To be doing something so authentically disgraceful and under the nose of authority took nerve and nerve was young.

Having a new book from 90-year-old Alan Bennett was an unexpected treat and I ordered one from the UK immediately after hearing about it being published (the North American edition is apparently not released until March 4, 2025). Its delivery was then held up by a several week Canadian Postal strike. But the strike ended just before Christmas and I returned to Toronto from holidays and found it in my mailbox at last.


Alan Bennett at 90, a portrait sourced from The National Rust.

Part of my delight of course was from having a new work by the author of one of my all-time favourites The Uncommon Reader (2007) in which a fictitious Elizabeth II becomes an impassioned reader quite late in life resulting in a leadup to a shock twist ending. The other delight was having a fictitious look at life in a senior care home during COVID written with Bennett's acerbic and sometimes acidic style.

You probably have to have spent some extended time in senior care homes to appreciate this and I can understand the reserved low-star ratings and reviews by some readers. For me this captures the sometimes madcap goings-on that I've observed myself, although obviously the fiction here is exaggerated for dramatic effect.

Whether it is old men seeking to expose themselves, cranky complainers, obsessive knitters, fussy eaters, reluctant visiting relatives, attempted escapees, item and clothing thefts from rooms, etc. etc. I've seen many of these sorts of things first hand (not the exposers though 😅) and some even crazier, like older women spouting obscenities in a Tourette's Syndrome stream of consciousness.

So this is dark humour which not all will enjoy and appreciate. For me it rang true regardless.

Other Reviews
The Financial Times reviews this as Killing Time — Alan Bennett is back with deadpan gallows humour, from November 13, 2024. Note: The Financial Times review is behind a paywall so the preceding link will likely not work for most, but, I was able to access it via the Bing Search engine which you can try for yourself here. Hopefully it will work for you as well.

Trivia and Link
Not a review, but you can read an extended interview with 90-year-old Alan Bennett at the Guardian done on the occasion of the new book's release at Alan Bennett at 90: 'What will people think? I don't care any more.'.

[Diane Barnes · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not for me. Only 100 pages in a small format book, but it was all gobbledygook to me.

[Kate O'Shea · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love Alan Bennett. He'd have to come and kick me in the shins for me to think less of him.

I'll be honest. The last story I read was Uncommon Reader and I got it on audio for the sheer pleasure of listening to Mr Bennett's voice. This time I bought the book and read it put loud to myself a là Bennett. Sounds weird but there's so much more enjoyment to be had if you use the same cadences as he does - that northern flattening, the pauses. It wasn't quite the same but I had fun anyway.

The story itself revolves around a group of elderly "guests" in Hill Topp, a care home by any other name. The story takes place just before and during the Covid outbreak but it doesn't dwell on the horror, it points out the confusion around the disease, the crazy ideas to stop the spread and the inevitability of sickness, hospitalisation and death.

Mr Bennett's story is typically matter of fact. We meet several interesting guests and there's always the odd spanner thrown in the works.

If you want to read an excellent story then read this. Or read any of his other work. Or watch some. They're all excellent.

[Bill · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very amusing novella from Alan Bennett, which is full of the great characters and superb dialogue you expect from this excellent writer.

[Jean-Luke · Rating 5 out of 5]

I just got done whining about how writers should retire, but based on this (as opposed his recently screenplay for The Choral), and perhaps because so much of his work has always been on the slight side, Alan Bennett (92) would be an exception. It reminded me a lot of Muriel Spark's Memento Mori, only this one was written by someone who is actually old, and I enjoyed it much more.

Welcome to Hill Topp House, with two p's. One of the residents is an exhibitionist, and another is a gigolo. Miss Rathbone and her jigsaw puzzles were my favorite (my future, for sure), and Woodruff reminded me of Bert Horrobin in The Archers. Queen Elizabeth II, of The Common Reader fame and still alive at the presumed writing of the story, is mentioned frequently, and COVID plays a role. This is the first piece of COVID fiction I have read, but I wouldn't say COVID is exactly the point. Neither COVID nor death from COVID is treated with much reverence, but then this is Alan Bennett we are talking about. Instead it is about getting old, but not necessarily cold. The show must go on—until one day it doesn't.

[Julie · Rating 3 out of 5]

A witty look into a posh adult living facility during Covid. No sensibility is spared.

[Stephen the Bookworm · Rating 5 out of 5]

This short novella is pitch perfect and full of Alan Bennett’s wry observations of the human condition and society.

Set in a residential care home before and during the Covid pandemic, residents foibles, eccentricities come under the spotlight - the minutiae that makes us all human .

The sense of being free to say and do exactly as you wish in your older years prevail but written with heart, warmth and pathos- shining a light on a community of people often “ forgotten “ by society.

There are many laugh out loud moments and subtleties in text that sometimes certain paragraphs need to be reread to pick up nuances and deeper meaning.

An absolute gem from a legend … sit back and savour every moment

[Deborah · Rating 4 out of 5]

A novella, or perhaps a long short story, about a group of British seniors in a “nicer” council home for the elderly. They’re a spritely, slightly mad bunch barely kept under control by the home’s manager with threats to transfer them to the far more downmarket place down the hill. And then Covid hits, the manager and most of the staff are carted off to the hospital, and things get chaotic. How does Bennett make it so funny? Dark comedy, for sure, but quite amusing all the same.

By the way, this Alan Bennett is the famous playwright, author and screenwriter. (Talking Heads, a series of 10 monologues by 10 different actors, filmed for television, is among the most electrifying things I’ve ever seen.) He’s 91 years old, so I expect his thoughts might be turning to the frailties and eccentricities of the old.

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

'Killing Time' (2024) is Alan Bennett's latest novella set in a care home to the backdrop of the COVID pandemic.

'Killing Time' is Bennett's first book for five years apparently and is, as is so oft quoted 'pitch perfect' stuff from Bennett at his best.

It's funny, moving, astute and above all else - deeply human. Satisfying and supremely executed, Alan Bennett most definitely on form.

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bennett’s black comedy is set at a posh home for the elderly, the Edwardian mansion Hill Topp House. (Residents know to be on their best behaviour lest they be demoted to an inferior neighbouring facility, Low Moor.) When a prospective client calls, Mrs McBryde enthusiastically lists the assets:

We have a choir and on special occasions a glass of dry sherry. It’s less of a home and more of a club and very much a community. We go on frequent trips out. Only last week we went to a local farm where they have a flamingo. … We don’t vegetate at Hill Topp. And the cuisine is not unadventurous. It’s not long since we had a Norwegian evening.

The dialogue is sparkling, just like you’d expect from a playwright. As in the Hendrik Groen books and Elizabeth Taylor’s Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont, the situation invites cliques and infantilizing. The occasional death provides a bit more excitement than jigsaws and knitting. Ageing bodies may be pitiable (the incontinence!), but sex remains a powerful impulse.

Here is where readers might start to feel disconnected from Bennett’s dated humour. The window cleaner turned gigolo is somewhat amusing; the repeated gag of a flasher, not so much. “Has she seen the sights yet?” two ladies ask. And a jesting conversation about clerical sexual abuse scandals seems particularly ill considered given recent news.

The story is most interesting and fresh once Covid comes onto the scene. Some perish early on; the survivors, ungoverned, do their best. I loved the detail of a resident turning a velvet dress into 60 masks. Two objects, one of them depicted on the cover (it’s not a grenade as I thought at first!), come to have particular importance. I liked this but thought by favouring broad humour it sacrificed characterization or compassion. You’ll enjoy it if you’re fond of wicked comedy by the likes of Alan Ayckbourn.

Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.

[Tom Mooney · Rating 4 out of 5]

Unhinged hilarity. At 90 years old, he still has it. I would also recommend the recent BBC film Alan Bennett 90 Years On, in which he reviews a life in writing with trademark wit and resignation.

[George Carlson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Did I read this little book to make sure I completed my 2024 reading challenge? Yep. Did I like this little book? Eh. Alan Bennett’s stories are charming, brief but fun (usually). This one felt grim. It follows a cast of characters in an old folks home during Covid. There’s death and some unlikeable characters. But that’s real life. I think the book could have been longer to flush out some scenes and characters.

[Lynne Aubrey · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Novella well written and funny, about the residents of a care home just before and during COVID.
I thought Alan Bennett really portrayed the characters very well and after visiting a care home a few times I could relate a few of the characters to people I have met.
My only criticism is that I thoughts the window cleaner Gus servicing the residents of the home for money in his garden shed was very far fetched otherwise a good read.

[Erik S · Rating 2 out of 5]

Humorous at times, I think it never quite captures any momentum in the story it’s telling. The concept is arguably very interesting but not much is said that fully captures it. The characters aren’t built up enough to warrant any connection and by the time Covid happens, the book ends.

[Helen_t_reads · Rating 4 out of 5]

Alan Bennett's darkly comic Killing Time features character studies of a memorable ensemble of characters: Phyllis the inveterate knitter; Miss Rathbone who loves jigsaw puzzles; Mr Woodruff, who flashes at any unwary female; Mr Peckover who thinks he's an archaeologist; Mr Cresswell, a flamboyant ex-cruise ship hairdresser; and Mrs Foss, an enterprising schemer.

It is set in Hill Topp House, a superior, upmarket home for the elderly that operates more like a members club, managed by the authoritarian and redoubtable Mrs McBryde. Nothing gets past her, and any resident who flouts her rules is threatened with banishment to Low Moor, a vastly inferior council-run home, located down the hill.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hits, the snobbish Mrs McBryde believes it won't dare invade the rarefied environment of Hill Topp, and “the wind would take care of them”.

However, when increasing numbers of staff are hospitalised, including Mrs McBryde, her rigorous care protocols break down. The residents experience an unexpected and hugely enjoyable sense of chaotic liberation, which reawakens their zest for life, and leads to the revelation of long hidden secrets.

Exploring themes of aging, identity and institutionalised living, this novella plays out in Alan Bennett's familiar wry, quirky and sharply observed style.

Laced with a heavy dose of dark humour and satire, the giddy joy of the residents' regained freedom is set against a more biting tone of loss and melancholy, reflected in the burning and destruction of the residents' treasures. This dominates the overall feel at the end. Perhaps intended as a powerful allusion to the dreadful situation in care homes during the pandemic?

All the Alan Bennett tropes and traits are here, and even though it's not the very best of his work, it's still good, and a standard of writing that the rest of us can only aspire to.

[Owen Townend · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bennett is droll as ever, but this story needed to be longer to have the desired effect.

Killing Time is set in Hill Top House, a retirement home filled with a variety of eccentric characters. There is the high-and-mighty Mrs McBryde, the cheerfully contrarian Woodruff, the guarded puzzler Miss Rathbone among many others. Getting to know this cast of character and watching them interact was by far my favourite part of the book. Unfortunately, Bennett hurries things along into the COVID pandemic.

While I have no issue with a literary depiction of this tragic time (indeed it's commendable to highlight the lovable human life that was extinguished by the virus) I would have preferred more pages to ensure that I care deeply about the old folks before they are cruelly snatched away. Though the witty segues and erudite observations consistently delighted me, they simply weren't enough to counterbalance the dispassionate rush to death.

I appreciate that Killing Time is a critique of how ill-prepared the UK was for COVID and how isolated retirees became, but the desired effect was weakened by not allowing these doomed characters more of a chance to be understood before the end. Nevertheless, if you like Bennett's writing style and can stomach a book about an awful period in recent memory, I would give Killing Time a try.

[ghostly_bookish · Rating 3 out of 5]

CAWPILE 4.86
3 STARS

Picked this up today while out and about and given how short it is, I thought I'd pick it up straight away.
Set in a care home during the pandemic, there were some funny moments and some of the elderly characters were eccentric in the ways you'd expect. It was also sad in some moments too.
I would read something else by Alan Bennett in the future.

[Francis Pellow · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very enjoyable. Like the Muriel Spark novel Momento Mori if it were confined to a retirement home with COVID approaching.

[Tom Edney · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brilliantly funny and quite touching in places. If you like Alan Bennett, you’ll love it. However, it’s not his best piece of work (but then again who writes their best at 90?).

[Beverley]

Some typical acutely observed Alan Bennett bits in this but on the whole a little disappointing. I think it would be better as a longer novel so the characters would become more detailed and the storyline could be developed.

[Jennifer (formerly Eccentric Muse)]

Oh dear. Someone should have gently persuaded the venerable Mr. Bennett, who published this in 2024 at the age of 90, that he really ought not to have voiced the thing.

[Rachel · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was supposed to be satire; I found it tragic.

[David Ellcock · Rating 4 out of 5]

Funny, poignant, closely observed. Funny in a very Alan Bennett way. The second half of the novella rushes to its conclusion after the more circuitous route through its first half. Though, given Bennett’s skill as a writer, and the way Covid seemed to stretch and warp time as we lived through it, that could well be deliberate.

[Kim · Rating 3 out of 5]

This short book (just over 100 pages) is set in the Council-run Hill Topp Care Home - with two 'p's, as the manager Mrs McBride is at pains to point out. And staying there is infinitely better than the home down in the valley, Low Moor, with which recalcitrant residents are threatened if they should step out of line!
Bennett's witty and ascerbic commentary on the goings-on in the home and the characters of the various residents is what I have come to expect from this accomplished writer, hence the reason that I pick up anything of his that I see in the library.
Then Covid strikes - not that it would dare to do so on the elevated and breezy position occupied by Hill Topp! But strike it does and, amidst a rising sickness and death toll, the unaffected residents find themselves with an almost new lease of life....
An excellent read but despatched within an hour or so - should have been a bit longer, hence 3 stars - 7/10.

Not really much to add to my previous review - re-read due to its selection as a Book Group read. Still an entertaining read but could do with being a bit longer - 7/10

[L.T. Hewitt · Rating 2 out of 5]

While it's great to see Bennett still producing witty prose at 90, this novella is less of a story and more a collection of vague anecdotes which never form a coherent whole.

His strongest plays have a clear theme, question or target – often all three. This care home meanders for 70 pages before encountering COVID in the final third, yet still has little to say, and Bennett's usual critique of the Conservative government is unforgivably absent.

The scattershot plotting and lack of clear message would make sense for something published in the early days of the pandemic. But five years down the line, the untimeliness and lack of hindsight makes this book a jarring read.

[Sean Sadler · Rating 1 out of 5]

Book borrowed from Stirling Library .
If this Novella did not have Alan Bennett’s name attached it is hard to believe it would succeed in finding a publisher.
The novella is populated by caricatures ,the story has little or no substance,
The COVID pandemic claimed many thousand of lives,many of those older people in Residential and Nursing Homes and to see how Bennett injects this into the storyline is pitiful and completely tone deaf in my view
The book is awful.

[Ron Dyer · Rating 1 out of 5]

A very short book I nevertheless endured unending torture in reading it to its very uneventful end. It had been my intention to pass the book onto others but I don’t believe I hate anyone enough to do so.

[Daniel Eaton · Rating 2 out of 5]

It did indeed kill some time, I guess.