Sometimes you just need a collection of short stories about an old lady who uses her cleverness and people’s assumptions about the abilities of old people to punish the bad and get away with it.
Plot: Maud is 88. She lives alone and has no real friends or family. Still, she’s quite content. She is healthy as an ox, has financial independence, and travels for fun for months at a time. Only now and again, she comes across some fucking piece of shit garbage person who needs to be put in the fucking ground. What’s a poor old dear to do? Shenanigans ensue.
This book is a short read which feels even shorter as each story is punchy and to the point. It’s a perfect palette cleanser if you’ve been reading a lot of heavy stuff. Even though the glimpses we get of Maud’s life seem quite sad, what we learn quite quickly is that Maud is resilient and has carved out a life for herself that pleases her.
An important note is that these are short stories meant to give the reader catharsis. If you come to it thinking that, for example, it is possible for Maud to be wrong in her assessment of a situation or its possible solutions, you might feel a bit frustrated.
Of course, the true appeal of this series is Maud. She is at this point in her life neither young and hot, or a mother or grandmother. Yet despite these roles being the bulk of how society values women, Tursten focuses her attention on an old woman who lives for herself and showcases that woman’s interior life and the day to day drama of her life as things that have value too. Even more, Tursten challenges the reader by having the world’s expectations of old women be both a shield and a weapon in navigating the difficulties of day to day life.