This is exactly what it says on the tin - a fictional diary of an 83-year-old man called Hendrik Groen who is living in a retirement village in the Netherlands, and documenting all the ups and downs of his daily life from which retiree has died each days to the internal battles between residents and administration. And also updates about his 'dribble' problem and if he needs to start wearing adult nappies.

I really thought I would love this book, as I find older 'OAP' characters fascinating and endearing when they are written right, and even though this book had everything I should have loved, I just didn't.

A majority of the things Hendrik jotted down in his diary were just a bit dull and boring, particularly the emphasis on Dutch politics (which may obviously have impact on Dutch readers but not so much on international ones), and the most exciting thing to ever really happen was Hendrik killing the village's fish with cake.

The relationships Hendrik had with some of the other retirees were very sweet, particularly one that turned romantic in a subtle way but in terms of his life before the retirement village, we got very information and the information we did get was dispassionately told to us in one diary entry and then not really mentioned again.

There were also some moments in this book that made me uncomfortable as I found them to be racist. The way Hendrik mentioned Muslims, Moroccans and Syria in this diary entries just rang a bit racist to me and the way he made some jokes about Syria was distasteful in my eyes. I'm not sure if the racist tone was suppose to be intentional because Hendrik is racist and sure aren't all old people a bit racist? Well actually, they're not. It wouldn't be revolutionary to write elderly man accepting of all races, religions and sexualities.

So yeah, I wouldn't recommend this one at all. Give it a miss.