Persephone Books discussion

How is everyone doing on this book? I'm almost done!
I love the character of Mr. Baldwin. He is very human and just a little bit silly. Here are a couple of favorite quotes:
(when he meets Mr. van Doon) "Mr. Baldwin felt a twinge of disappointment. For general purposes he divided the human race into three broad categories:
(a) Men who referred to their wives as "my wife."
(b) Men who referred to them as "the wife".
(c) Those who called them "my old lady."
He sadly placed his new acquaintance in category (b)."

(also having to do with Mr. van Doon) "Mr. Baldwin did not like the way his visitor had jerked his head suggestively towards him and winked artfully at his wife: he did not like the word "binge," or "hubby" very much--and he began to realize the horrible mistake he had made. He should have known that the best kind of people are not picked up so casually in the night."

Ha! I loved that quote too. Did you notice he was quite right, and a bit later, Mr van Doon said "the wife" exactly as predicted?

I really enjoyed the whole book. It was looking very sad at one point, and I was scared for them, but it was lovely at the end.

It reminded me very much of one set of my grandparents. My grandfather also retired from the City in his 50s, in his case because he had a heart attack, so he couldn't do even the gardening that Mr Baldwin did, and they had to move from their house to an apartment with no stairs. He did join the local bowls club which Mr Baldwin turned up his nose at, but I remember him and my grandmother always bickering, like the Baldwins do at one point, and I wonder now if it was because they were too much under each other's feet. Anyway, he never had another heart attack and lived another 30 years - dying just a few months after my grandmother, as if he couldn't live without the bickering in the end!