David Nobbs 
Going Gently 

Kate Thomas was beautiful, intelligent, witty, passionate and sexy. Now, at the ripe old age of ninety-nine, she is trapped in a hospital ward of sad, mad and bad old women. She escapes by playing to herself the video of her life.
What a life it has been. Her six marriages have ended in suicide, a husband”s adultery, another husband”s deportation as a dangerous alien, a union dispute, a murder, and a natural death. But Kate”s journey through the twentieth century is also a search for the truth – about life, death, and which of her three sons murdered her fifth husband.
This is a novel rich in memorable characters, from Kate”s narrow but loving Welsh family to the wild members of an artists” colony in Cornwall; from Midland piston manufacturers to an investigative journalist whose own life cannot bear investigation.