---
product_id: 8491286
title: "Staying On: A Novel (Phoenix Fiction)"
brand: "paul scott"
price: "S$38"
currency: SGD
in_stock: false
reviews_count: 9
url: https://www.desertcart.sg/products/8491286-staying-on-a-novel-phoenix-fiction
store_origin: SG
region: Singapore
---

# Staying On: A Novel (Phoenix Fiction)

**Brand:** paul scott
**Price:** S$38
**Availability:** ❌ Out of Stock

## Quick Answers

- **What is this?** Staying On: A Novel (Phoenix Fiction) by paul scott
- **How much does it cost?** S$38 with free shipping
- **Is it available?** Currently out of stock
- **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.sg](https://www.desertcart.sg/products/8491286-staying-on-a-novel-phoenix-fiction)

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- paul scott enthusiasts

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## Description

Staying On: A Novel (Phoenix Fiction)

## Images

![Staying On: A Novel (Phoenix Fiction) - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51YyPMazhPL.jpg)
![Staying On: A Novel (Phoenix Fiction) - Image 2](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51brYdEGLpL.jpg)
![Staying On: A Novel (Phoenix Fiction) - Image 3](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/31v-kWL-hEL.jpg)

## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ 







  
  
    Raj Quartet Sequel
  

*by B***J on Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on February 21, 2023*

Slow paced. Lovely descriptions of aging Brits and their 'hosts' in India after partition and the end of British rule.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 







  
  
    An oustanding book about the last remnants of the English Raj living on in India: hilarious without ever condescending
  

*by J***. on Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on October 19, 2014*

A Quartet and a sequel (this volume), and I wish it went on for another five volumes.  The writing is outstanding, and this time around they are mostly hilarious.  I mean "laugh out loud funny." The Raj Quartet itself is generally much more sober, though it does have playful elements that never strike a wrong note.  As for Staying On:British rule in India is long over, but Lucy and "Tusker" Smalley remember when things were different.  Not better, because of course India had to be handed over to the Indians, it's just that one was born at the wrong time, too young to retire, too old to go "home" to England and start something new, especially since the trip home would cost most of one's savings and the old pension wouldn't be enough to live on.  So, one stayed on and made do, and remembered the proper way to do things while enjoying, or pretending to enjoy, the new ways things were done.  In fact, one remembered that the "proper ways" usually left one out in the cold, snubbed, at the bottom of the social hierarchy that was so strict in British India.  Now, one was thrust in among the new Indian middle classes while keeping, on form alone, some connection to the Indian higher classes that came from new money, black market money.Without really thinking about it, one's true friends had become a most peculiar assortment of people from varying classes, divided by community stature, wealth, poverty, religion, employment, history, and interests, and often united only by a common friendship with one's self.  Extraordinary, really.  Better not to think about it, just to press on and have another drink and walk the blasted dog and rage about whatever seems to be most annoying this particular day.  At least, Tusker would rage, but never Lucy, though she was built of stern stuff, just on a tiny frame and hidden by a graciousness that was not apparent 30 years ago, in the company of women who constantly snubbed her because she had once had to work for a living.  No, in those days she seemed timid, compliant and always to be saying the wrong thing.This book plays no favorites.  People are shown to be who they are, and they are individuals who may be Christian, Muslim, Hindu or Sikh. They are imperfect, some more so than others.  The humor arises from their interactions with each other, their private thoughts, the poor versions of each others' languages they speak and the miscommunications that result, the great miscommunications between husband and wife that cannot be blamed on language barriers, as well as the almost telepathic communication between people who have known each other for 30 or more years, even if they don't speak each others' languages at all well.  Sometimes it is enough to marvel at the sound of a new English word added to one's vocabulary, and to attempt to tease out its meaning from the context.  Sometimes it is enough to delight in the hard and skillful work of a young orphan who tends a garden and has taken it upon himself also to tend the old graveyard next to St. John's, the graveyard where old Mabel Layton was the last person to be buried according to Mr. Maybrick's history of the town. Well, he's got that wrong, too. Maybrick was the last person buried there.  And so it goes...

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 







  
  
    A wry sequel
  

*by R***E on Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 29, 2009*

In calling STAYING ON a sequel, I am not referring primarily to Paul Scott's celebrated 
  
RAJ QUARTET







  
  
    ; this little postlude is softer in tone, and although sharing some characters, it stands entirely on its own. But it is a sequel to several centuries of British life in India, and to two of those lives in particular: Col. Tusker Smalley and his wife Lucy. The novel opens with Tusker's death in 1972, 25 years after India gained independence. Remaining after others have left, he and Lucy have settled in the small hill town of Pankot. They live now in the annexe to the old-style Smith's Hotel, which is itself overshadowed by the snazzier Shiraz next door; the old British ways are not the only ones dying out. [Scott's post-colonial world is not so different from that of a more recent Booker Prize winner, 
  
THE INHERITANCE OF LOSS







  
  
     by Kiran Desai.]Scott's unlikely representative of the new order is the odiously comic Mrs. Bhoolabhoy, a vastly overweight and capricious empress who has purchased Smith's and married its former manager, enslaving him as her factotum and occasional sexual partner. Her driving ambition is to play with the big boys, and nothing or nobody will stand in her way. Poor Mr. Bhoolabhoy is one of a number of Indians whose lives were shaped by an almost-feudal relationship with the British Raj; in a sense, they have also been left stranded. He is also churchwarden for the Anglican church, whose services have been reduced to one per month. When a new priest arrives, a dark-skinned High Anglican from Southern India, Bhoolabhoy feels that everything has fallen apart. But the newcomer has great charisma and quickly revitalizes the little community; it is a small but welcome assurance that a successful grafting of the old and the new may still be possible.The core of the book, however, is Lucy's story. The action jumps back three months before Tusker's death to the time of his first attack. During this short period, whether through Lucy's petty skirmishes with her husband, or her explanations to correspondents both real and imaginary, we are taken back to a vanished age, the colonial India of books from EM Forster's 
  
A PASSAGE TO INDIA







  
  
     through Scott's own RAJ QUARTET. Lucy's memories, though long, are not always happy; this is a world of strict hierarchy and petty snobbery, dominated by bored memsahibs who patronize Lucy as only a poor clergyman's daughter. Tusker's career has suffered as a result, exacerbated by the combination of limited talent and stubborn pride. Fueled by regrets, their relationship has become a continual squabble that teeters on the far side of comedy. But at the very end, Tusker writes Lucy a letter apologizing for his inadequacies; it is the loveliest thing she has ever had from him, and a moving end to this wry tragicomedy of a book.

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*Product available on Desertcart Singapore*
*Store origin: SG*
*Last updated: 2026-01-31*