Well, this is certainly one hot mess of a novelette, and it is deliciously illustrated in sketchy (in all meanings of the word) drawings by the novelist herself, a surrealistic painter. The heroine, nonagenarian vegetarian Marian Leatherby, starts off as quite deaf, but is then gifted with an old school hearing trumpet that lets her hear everything. But seemingly no one notices it, even though in the drawings it looms over her head like a conning tower. She has been placed by her children in a compound for elderly ladies in Mexico City (the author’s home town for the latter part of her life) run by Dr. Gambit and his wife, both intent on improving the lives of the residents to their specifications. But they failed to notice that Marian is an instigator of the first order.
She rouses most of the ladies to a certain level of rebellion (some are past hope) and the good doctor is helpless against them. There is a middle section involving the portrait of a cross- dressing abbess with a salacious wink, who comes to life, and the book goes off the rails for a bit there in all sorts of mystical revelations, IMHO. It may or may not be pertinent that the author spent a bit of time institutionalized. But the story pulls itself together in grand fashion at the end, and it might be mentioned that polar bears are involved.
So if you don’t mind a bit of skimming in the middle, this is a hoot, and the drawings are an absolute treat.