On a rainy Sunday afternoon in January, Mrs. Palfrey, recently widowed, arrives at the Claremont Hotel where she will spend her remaining days. Her fellow residents are a mixed bunch -- magnificently flawed and eccentric -- living off crumbs of affection and an obsessive interest in the relentless round of hotel meals. Together, upper lips stiffened, they fight off their twin enemies: boredom and the Grim Reaper. And then one day, Mrs. Palfrey encounters the handsome young writer Ludo, and learns that even old can fall in love