Book Review - Killing Time by Alan Bennett

Bennett is droll as ever, but this story needed to be longer to have the desired effect.

Killing Time is set in Hill Top House, a retirement home filled with a variety of eccentric characters. There is the high-and-mighty Mrs McBryde, the cheerfully contrarian Woodruff, the guarded puzzler Miss Rathbone among many others. Getting to know this cast of character and watching them interact was by far my favourite part of the book. Unfortunately, Bennett hurries things along into the COVID pandemic.

While I have no issue with a literary depiction of this tragic time (indeed it's commendable to highlight the lovable human life that was extinguished by the virus) I would have preferred more pages to ensure that I care deeply about the old folks before they are cruelly snatched away. Though the witty segues and erudite observations consistently delighted me, they simply weren't enough to counterbalance the dispassionate rush to death.

I appreciate that Killing Time is a critique of how ill-prepared the UK was for COVID and how isolated retirees became, but the desired effect was weakened by not allowing these doomed characters more of a chance to be understood before the end. Nevertheless, if you like Bennett's writing style and can stomach a book about an awful period in recent memory, I would give Killing Time a try.