The Single Ladies of Jacaranda Retirement Village
By: Joanna Nell / Narrated By: Deidre Rubenstein
Length: 11 hrs and 36 mins
Yeh, yeh, yeh. There’s no plot to speak of. But that doesn’t mean it’s not delightful!
Seriously, I was kinda fearful that The Single Ladies of Jacaranda Retirement Village was going to be aNOTHer one of those: Feisty old people take the world by storm audiobooks. Instead, what I found was the delightful Peggy Smart, 79-year old woman with a bad bladder, and a geriatric dog. She fumbles around trying to get to the bathroom on time and keeping up with the days of the week by counting blister packs of all the medications she takes. In her beige life, the highlight of her day is watching that captivating widower, Brian, as he glides along on his titanium knee replacements, dreaming of the day she’ll have the guts (And the tamed bladder) to ask him over for an intimate dinner.
She is inFLAMed with desire and lust for the man, something that would cause much consternation to her two children, who are just itching to take away her independence and put her into a nursing home. But Peggy is a restrained woman, cautious like crazy, and fearful? Yup, been that way all her life. So a date with Brian is just desperately wishful thinking.
All that changes when her oldest friend Angie, whom she hasn’t seen for 50 years, moves into the Jacaranda Retirement Village, bringing her zestful enthusiasm, her unbridled joy, and the utter fearlessness that used to get the two of them sent to detention when they were but mere girls. Out with the beige, and in with all that’s colorful!
Nope, there’s no plot, no real story. This is just about people trying to get along as they deal with bodies in decay, with thoughts of their looming deaths, with life amongst others who think that the Retirement Village library is Out of Control what with nobody respecting the Dewey Decimal system any longer. It’s a story of friendship past, and friendship now, and friendship even until death (At which point a Village Committee will send the survivor a Sympathy fruit-basket).
I liked how the story interjected memories of early friendship between Peggy and Angie, where we see Peggy’s scarring experiences and Angie’s sensitive and compassionate side. This makes it so very believable that Angie would take the time now, when they don’t have much time left, to see that Peggy lives a little, lives a life rather than an impending death. It’s a sweet story about women’s friendships, loyalty, and learning to embrace life, even when it’s been shadowed by loss and great pain.
I did try, as I always do, to listen to this at x1 speed, but I found Deidre Rubenstein’s voice to have a smug and snotty tone. This went away at x1.25 and the occasional x1.5 speed. It wasn’t a matter of me just being my usual impatient self, I tell you: It really did indeed sound better at those speeds, the characters coming off as less snooty. Other than that, Rubenstein voiced each character well, esPECially Peggy and the vivacious tho’ aging Angie. And she made Brian an irresistible old man, suave and smooth, even as he went to Village Meetings with unmatched socks (See? Peggy thinks to herself, he DOES need a woman in his life: Someone to make sure his socks matched and lint was brushed from his shoulders…).
And it was utterly captivating that even as Peggy longed to brush lint from his shoulders, she dreeeamed of tumbling around with him, all lusty-like, in her bed. How refreshing to have a heroine with a healthy libido, even if her bladder is a tad compromised.
Like I said, there’s no real plot, but this is such a nice study of likable characters, narrated with verve and emotion, and there’s a bit of a secret and a twist or two thrown in there that I felt the 11+ hours go by quite quickly indeed.
So after all? Who needs a Regency romance to get a Happily Ever After? All you need is a group of people trying to fill their final years as best they can.
And the geriatric dog is a plus!
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