Ok, just finished the Iain Reid book. Great last name pal. Penny is an elderly woman living alone in her apartment after her partner dies. They were painters, he the more famous.  She thought she wasn’t as talented. Or perhaps, she could’ve been the better painter but it was hard living in her partner’s very large shadow.

She’s lonely and a little paranoid living alone. Her most loyal companions are the mice who live with her. She sees a person across the street staring into her apartment. She worries, not sure if the dark shadow is friend or foe. Living alone and aging brings on paranoia. Who can you talk to about seeing suspicious shadows if you are alone? The voices in your head? Oh yea, those are so reliable. No matter what age.

Then one day, she’s trying to change a lightbulb and she smacks her head on the counter. She lies there unconscious until her landlord finds her and calls the paramedics. It could’ve been much worse. Landlord packs her bags and hauls her to a retirement home, “Six Cedars.”

The place is wonderful – lots of trees surrounding an old Victorian home. A place to live out your years in peace, quiet and verdant pleasure. Except you can’t go outside. Too dangerous. Shelly runs the house for purely altruistic reasons, or does she? She has another dude working for her, Jack a repenting soul – issues we never know about. Also in the home are four patients – Hilbert, a mathematician, Ruth a chatterbox translator who speaks many languages and finally Pete who never speaks but plays a beautiful violin.

When Penny arrives at the home all is grand – she is eating well, more than her apartment staple of canned tomato soup. She sleeps well another necessity she lacked while living on her own. All is just hunky dory until weirdness happens (time starts slipping) – she paints prodigiously but doesn’t remember creating, fungi grows on people, Sistine Chapel frescos appear.  Windows are not real, they are more like a Salvor Dali painting where the glass bends and wobbles. Penny is suspicious. She feels the need to escape. She needs to walk among the trees like the old days in the park near her apartment. A place she felt safe. She does not feel safe in the painting that’s come alive.

Now, what to make of this novel. What’s it all about? What does it mean? I do not know. I see Penny as elderly person who gets to the point where she can’t take care of herself, and she’s forced to move. Maybe she actually dies in the apartment and the retirement home is her purgatory before she moves on. Her last final painting. Her great work of art. She says she doesn’t like to complete her work; she loves the “in progress” tone of her art – to borrow a cliche, life is about the continually moving journey not the stagnant destination. She finally creates her masterpiece, reaching the final station along the line. Once complete she moves on. Isn’t this like all humans? Fear that if we complete our journey, it’s the end. A reason many won’t get a will done – if I see a lawyer and leave all my earthly possessions to my dog, down comes the deadly hand of fate. Ok, maybe that’s just me.