Ingrid Noll Ladylike Diogenes Verlag March 2006, 336 pp. ISBN 3-257-06509-4 Lore, the narrator of this cool, entertaining, and shamelessly cynical novel, is seventy when it starts. So is its author, Ingrid Noll. Let us hope that there are few other resemblances, except for the fact that life begins at seventy nowadays much more often than it used to. That is of course a plus for this story in Britain, where TV programmes like Last of the Summer Wine and One Foot in the Grave are so popular. Another is the deadpan tone, which conceals real understanding of a range of human emotions beneath its flippancy. What a pity, runs its message, that sex has so boringly to be connected with procreation. What’s the harm in skinning the rich or indulging in a bit of shoplifting? Come to that, if your doddery husband is becoming too much of a trial, why not take advantage of your access to a supply of wolfsbane to ‘help him on his way’? Lore and her school-friend Annalies find themselves, for various reasons, footloose and fancy-free. They move in together, hatch up plans for a life lived according to a different set of rules, and set off on the road-trip of a lifetime, from romantic Heidelberg to skinny-dipping in the North Sea. We join them for the ride, but there’s nothing harmless about these old dears, and their joie de vivre sweeps all obstacles from their path – inanimate or otherwise. When a childhood sweetheart turns up they discover they are not the only ones still fuelled by passion and curiosity. And why not? Should that passion wane or prove tiresome, well, there is always the cache of wolfsbane. Full marks for an old-time thriller writer with her irresistible brand of humour and the delightfully wicked glint in her eye. “Readers love her for her wickedness, her psychological finesse, her dry, black humour, all laced with delicious malice.” – profil, Vienna