How to Age Disgracefully

How to Age Disgracefully (2024) is a novel by Clare Pooley. How to Age Disgracefully features the members of a London senior’s social club and the bonds they form as they band together to save a community center and help each other navigate their individual challenges and heartbreaks. At the center is Daphne, who, upon turning seventy, decides she needs friends and so sets in motion a chain of events that culminates in several of the characters confronting their painful pasts. Described by critics as a warm, hilarious tale of friendship and discovery, Pooley’s novel deals frankly with the challenges of aging and the importance of social connection, however that might manifest. Pooley is the New York Times bestselling author of two previous novels, Iona Iverson’s Rules for Commuting (2022) and The Authenticity Project (2020).

This guide uses the 2024 hardcover first edition published by Penguin.

Plot Summary

In the Prologue, a policewoman pulls over a minibus and boards looking for a suspect. The passengers, of various ages, begin confessing to various misdeeds, but the person the policewoman is looking for has left the bus.

The action then looks back to three months earlier, when Daphne, contemplating her 70th birthday, decides it is time to have a social life. She has hardly ventured outside her apartment in Hammersmith in 15 years, so she makes a plan to reengage with the world, which includes buying a new mobile phone.

Art, a 75-year-old man, is contemplating his diminishing acting career when he sees a woman (who is Daphne) on the street trying to carry a whiteboard. She shouts at him when he offers help. Art is dismayed to later find the same woman attending a meeting for a new senior social club at the community center.

Lydia, the middle-aged woman running the group, finds things getting out of hand when sharp words break out among the attendees, who also include Daphne; William, Art’s lifelong friend; Ruby, a dedicated knitter; and Anna, known for her colorfully dyed hair and aggressive driving on her mobility cart. A retired schoolmistress, Pauline, is lecturing them all when part of the ceiling suddenly collapses on her. Ziggy, a teenaged single father who is coming to the community center to collect his daughter, Kylie, from the nursery school, sees the wreckage and hopes the nursery will stay open, since he needs childcare while he finishes high school.

Daphne enjoys the excitement of events, while Lydia is rattled. She takes in Pauline’s dog, but when her husband, Jeremy, complains, Lydia asks if anyone in the senior group wants to share custody of the dog, which is named Maggie Thatcher. Daphne volunteers to help, and so does Art, whose agent has told him about a TV competition “Me and My Dog.” Daphne also offers to help occasionally watch Kylie if Ziggy will help her set up an internet dating profile.

Art observes Lydia with her husband and realizes he isn’t kind to her, but Art has his own problems, which include a compulsion for stealing and estrangement from his daughter. At a meeting to discuss the future of the community center, Daphne feels ignored when the council decides to look into plans to close the center and sell it to a developer. All four of the protagonists feel invested in the center and want to see it continue operations, but none of them have the funds for repairs.

While Art, Daphne, and Lydia take turns bonding with Maggie the dog, Daphne takes care of Kylie, though babies are unfamiliar to her. Art, fearful of his future, confronts the wardrobe in his absent daughter’s room, which is stuffed full of items he’s stolen. He feels marginally better when he gives some items away. Ziggy meets a fellow student, an oboe player named Alicia, who interests him. Lydia worries that her husband is having an affair; Art and William, in following Jeremy, have pictures of him with an attractive young blonde woman. Lydia wonders if it’s her fault that her husband lost interest.

Art proposes to gain support for the community center by helping the nursery school stage their nativity play. He enjoys the opportunity to work with the kids, particularly a nonverbal boy named Lucky. Ziggy, though trying to avoid the gangs in the housing development where he lives, gets roped into running drugs for Floyd. Daphne helps Lydia persuade the members of the council to attend the play, which is a disaster. The children perform well, but a local store manager recognizes the stolen bakery goods that Art has put on the refreshment table. Lydia also sees the slideshow of pictures William took, which include Jeremy passionately kissing the young blonde. Ziggy is rejected by Alicia when she discovers he has drugs in his baby stroller.

As life falls apart for the other three protagonists, Daphne begins taking charge. She meets a man, Sidney, who seems to adore her. When Lydia despairs over her husband’s infidelity, Daphne loans her designer clothes and fabulous jewels, coaching Lydia to respect herself once again. Art, in a moment of desperation, gets himself caught stealing, but Daphne comes to rescue him, posing as his wife and pretending he has dementia.

As she and Art become closer, Daphne organizes a cleanup of Art’s apartment and accompanies him to auditions for the TV talent show, where she shares that Art has an estranged daughter. When Ziggy is beaten after he tries to stop working for Floyd, Daphne swoops in to help him as well. She stands up to Floyd and gives him a necklace in return for leaving Ziggy alone. Ziggy is in awe of Daphne, who has gone viral on TikTok after confronting a council member, but Daphne realizes the clock is ticking and her past is closing in.

Daphne works all the harder to help her friends, who have staked the future of the community center on Art and Maggie winning the TV show competition. Art, William, and Daphne organize revenge against Lydia’s husband, Jeremy, for cheating on her. Ziggy returns to school and vows to get his life back on track. Daphne even apologizes to Art for betraying his secret. When Sidney tries to con her out of money, however, Daphne sees her plans unraveling. After a detective comes to the center looking for Delilah Jones, who was married to an infamous thief, Lydia realizes that Delilah Jones is Daphne.

When the policewoman stops their minibus on the way to the TV audition, Art slips Anna’s passport to Daphne to help her escape. Art and Maggie win second place at the show, and Art is confronted by his daughter, Kerry, who is still angry with him. However, Ziggy’s GoFundMe page gathers the funds they need to save the community center.

Three months later, Art is happy with his acting career, which has been revived thanks to Maggie. Ziggy has an offer from a university and is friends again with Alicia. Lydia, feeling happy with herself, advertises for new members for the senior social group. In the Epilogue, Art visits Daphne, who is living abroad, enjoying her new life.