Author: Catharina Ingelman-Sundberg
Series: Pensionärsligan #1
Narrator: Patience Tomlinson
Playback 12hrs 16m
Publisher: Pan MacMillan
Genre: Mystery, Crime, Contemporary
First published 2012
Book description: 79-year-old Martha Anderson dreams of escaping her care home and robbing a bank. She has no intention of spending the rest of her days in an armchair and is determined to fund her way to a much more exciting lifestyle. Along with her four oldest friends - otherwise known as the League of Pensioners - Martha decides to rebel against all of the rules imposed upon them. Together, they cause an uproar with their antics: protesting against early bedtimes and plastic meals. As the elderly friends become more daring, their activities escalate and they come up with a cunning plan to break out of the care home and land themselves in a far more attractive Stockholm establishment. With the aid of their Zimmer frames, they resolve to stand up for old-aged pensioners everywhere - Robin Hood style. And that's when the adventure takes off.
Review:
This is a character based meant to be humorous. The premise reminds me a lot of the Robert Deniro movie "Going in Style". A group of older people in an assisted living facility become frustrated with their living conditions and they get it into their heads that they can fund better elderly care if they only had millions.
They want to commit the perfect crime where nobody gets hurt but at the same time, they are able to make enough money and live comfortably in their old age.
They become the League of Pensioners and start planning their first-ever crime. They have moral crises and some of them continue to deny to themselves they are committing crimes for some reason that seems to be considered a big deal for them. It does require a bit of suspension of disbelief on the part of the reader. Be prepared to have all imaginable situations turning against them in the silliest way possible.
Early on in the story, they are the most incompetent thieves ever, everything they plan has huge holes in them or is so unrealistic that you can only assume it's supposed to be funny or ironic. Also, it started me thinking:
-Do young people actually ignore elderly people so much?
-Can police and other management people simply accept an elder person to behave so clueless?
I assume this book was meant as a social commentary towards Sweedish society, which starts you wondering; Sweden is famed to be the example to follow, the closest to social perfection, so why are they being so awful to their old people? The administrators lock the 'clients' up at night, and then (mild spoiler) the staff decides to mildly drug them to keep them compliant.
With that logic, is this happening in a retirement home or a nursing home? If so, it's safe to assume that other countries that have a less savory reputation have some similar abuses towards the people who have so little voice and options to defend themselves. It just brings to light how many older people refuse to be moved to a nursing home and some think this is the worst kind of fate to befall them. Is such a sad thing, because we as a society are accomplices- society as a whole is so compliant and does not effort to improve the conditions of these places.
The League of Pensioners have good intentions, they are pretty useless thieves, and just by huge hits of luck not because of the awesome thieving skills they get by. This is a fun and heartwarming read.
The audiobook was such a good option, this is a pretty straightforward and simple story. This was a great book to listen to while doing mindless tasks at work. It was pretty funny, I was ignoring my teammates for a while, took off my headphones for small conversation, and then went back to my book. Nowadays my team laughs just saying "You are listening to one of your books right?"
Oh, they know me so well.
This was used towards the challenges:
Series
Around the world: Sweeden
Translated works
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