Nina StibbeReseñas

Nina takes a year out in her 60’s to become a lodger in London. And this diary notes her inconsequential doings. No, my pub team doesn’t include Nick Hornby, but I found her very relatable. And the diary was like spending pleasant time with a like-minded irreverent friend.

I'm not sure about this one. Most of it was kind of tortuous for me because I don't enjoy lots of details about daily life, and I don't know enough about the 1980's London literary scene to know who in the world the author was talking about. I mostly enjoy the second part, when the author started attending college and the writing improved greatly. I didn't find it to be particular clever or funny, just a bit odd. Maybe you need to be British to find it funny.

Recommendation from a penpal.

Letters from Nina to her sister logging her daily life as a nanny & EngLit student at a Poly in the mid 80’s. Alan Bennett is a neighbour and usually comes to supper. And Nina has picked up his talent for observing, appreciating, and writing about the ordinary. Charming, authentic and funny.

Sweet, much like I imagine Cold Comfort Farm might have been described by a younger child. Lizzie Vogel’s parents are divorced and her mother is trying to cope with the changed circumstances despite being the sort who stays in bed a lot and writes plays.
Meanwhile the kids range about in a crowd with a motley abundance of pets (I particularly liked Maxwell the pony) and write letters to various men trying to match up their mother. Cheerful disasters ensue and all is much fun despite the grimness of the situation.
Nina Stibbe is so very good at capturing the logic of children in this, the small hurts, the pride, the struggling to make things right, the coping of kids with no responsible adult to look after them. At one point Lizzie wakes up with a heaviness in her chest…and her mother describes it as “the pig” that comes sometimes and sits on you for a while but eventually goes away again and that’s a pretty clear and true description of how depression might feel to a kid.
Despite the challenges, the Vogel kids and mother keep on keeping on in true British spirit and by the end of the book I was quite in love with them all.
Funny but in a way that gives you more in emotional depth than it at first appears. Highly recommended.

I really loved this book. It's a very difficult thing to have your narrator be a young person and not have them come across as all ridiculous and precocious, I'm looking at you Flavia de Luce.

Lizzie, this narrator, does not come across that way. There is a reality and a feeling of being anchored in life that are so strong in her that you can't help but cheer her on.

Also, there is that one scene that catches you unaware while riding the bus to work on a Friday morning and you burst into tears. Brilliant.

Devoured this book. Sharp, simple, perfect writing about a beautifully observed and complicated house. I wish I could read it again right now.

Loopy and entertaining story about an 18 year old girl in 80s England. Very funny, although things slowed down a bit in the end. A very crazy but mostly lovable cast of characters. I’ll never see a dentist’s office in quite the same way.

Bailing at 23%. I'm not sure why I should care about the story based on what I've read so far.

Introverted Susan and extrovert Norma became friends almost by accident, thrown together professionally they realise they actually need each other. Whilst Susan marries her first serious boyfriend and drops out of college, Norma rushes from one relationship to another and and becomes an acclaimed writer. Now both middle-aged and working at the same University they rediscover their value to each other as a pandemic looms.
Every Nina Stibbe book is a joy from start to finish and this is no exception. The reader warms to Susan whilst getting incredibly frustrated with her passiveness and vacillates between love and hate for Norma. The skill of Stibbe is to get the reader to empathise with each character and yet laugh out loud and the absurdity and mundanity. Just a really wonderful book.

I was not particularly enjoying this book as I reached the middle. The humor was missing me. I felt sorry for the kids who had dirty hair and a divorced mother with a reputation. But the last bit got to me.

I also like that Lizzie tells us she's writing a separate book about the sneaky charismatic pony Maxwell.

The book evokes the desperate feeling of being an outsider and not having any friends. I'm surprised at how well it comes across because these characters are the least sentimental bunch I've ever run into.

adult fiction/humor. This was sort of reminiscent of "my family and other animals" with its droll escapades recounted by a child, but with more adult situations and language. I did enjoy Nina Stibbe's narratives in her letters (see her previous memoir from her nanny days, especially as an audiobook) but this fictional account fared much better for its plot structure.

nonfiction/letters (eAudiobook version). I can't find the name of the narrator, so maybe it was read by the author? I thought it was fine--a bit mundane, yes, but they're letters from someone's daily life, not meant to be ultra dramatic. And I liked listening to her voice prattle on about this and that as I went about my chores.

[This is a review I wrote in 2016]

I’ve not long finished reading Love, Nina and although I have a couple of other books in my waiting-to-review stack, I want to share this one first; not least because of the recent TV mini-series adapted by Nick Hornby which, although good, I didn’t enjoy half as much as the book.

Reading the book very close to watching the TV adaptation was a coincidence and it wasn’t until I was already half-way through the book – and half-way in love with this delightful family and eccentric nanny that I saw the series was about to start on BBC1. In hindsight I wish I hadn’t watched them so close together as Nick Hornby takes a bit of artistic license with the anecdotes, names are changed and the feeling of the series is quite different to the book.

Nina Stibbe was aged 20 in 1982, when she left her home in Leicestershire and went to work as a nanny to two young boys in central London. Nina had no idea how to do nanny things; how to cook, clean or how to look after children! She was so appalling at housework her employer had to employ a cleaner while she was there as well! She had no idea who the eccentrics were who called round at the house, or who this Alan Bennett was who invited himself round for dinner nearly every day… but she had a good sense of humour and a matter-of-fact nature which seem to be all the essentials she needed. Most importantly Nina was very happy in her job and loved spending time with the boys, oft-times treating them to lots of fun like an older sister might.

Nina’s employer was Mary-Kay Wilmers and her two sons, Nina’s two charges, were Sam Frears (aged 10) and Will Frears (aged 9). Various other characters that crop up in the book include Jonathan Miller, Claire Tomalin and her son, Tom, Michael Frayn, Stephen Frears (the boys’ father), Ursula Vaughan Williams, and others.

Here’s a quote of Nina’s about her nannying style, taken from her blog, The Good Nanny by Nina Stibbe

" “Then there was my child-minding style. I put Sam (aged ten and with some disabilities) into a builder’s skip for a laugh and struggled to lift him out again. I pushed him into a swimming pool because he didn’t fancy a swim and read Thomas Hardy to him pretending it was Enid Blyton. I did other things too awful to write here (things that are explained in detail in the book).
I completed nine-year-old Will’s homework for him to get it out of the way so that he could get on with a novel he was writing and taught him to draw a fake tattoo on his arm in ink and took both boys on grafitti-hunting expeditions. I pranged the car and made the boys promise on their mother’s deathbed not to tell her about it. I walked around barefoot and took them to the pub to play snooker. I smoked and swore like a trooper.” "

The book takes the form of a collection of letters Nina wrote home to her younger sister, Vic which the two sisters apparently discovered some years later in Vic’s attic, to their absolute hilarity! There’s an honesty and warmth about them, such as you will only find between two people close to each other. Nina is quite frank about what goes on in Gloucester Crescent and passes on the odd snippet of wisdom to her sister as well as exchanging recipe ideas and other tips:

“Thanks for recipe. I didn’t do it exact – too many ingredients. I’ve not done anything with more than five/six things in it so far. Plus we don’t have the right attachments or a pestle. So I did my own version: Cooked chicken, almond flakes, curry powder and parsley, plus two packs Bachelor’s savoury rice.”

This is by far and away one of my favourite books that I’ve read so far this year and it’s one I will definitely re-read when I need some light humour, a good laugh, or even a bit of a pick-me-up. I’ve already recommended it to customers and it’s had a good response. It’s warm, endearing, refreshingly candid and hilariously naive and I can’t imagine anyone not enjoying it as a light-hearted read. In fact, if you haven’t got your beach reads for the summer sorted yet then add this one to your stack.

Complete and utter drivel, laugh out loud, cringe and cry, kept wanting to put it in the Givrn Up On basket but failed, resigned to wasting a day reading it. Spare your self.

The funniest, reminded me of Alan Bennet, the unlikely mundane details. Such brilliant dialogue and a window onto the literary world from someone who didn’t care about it. Just loved Nina and especially her reading it out.

This book had me chuckling throughout the whole story! Observations on Christmas' past, helpful suggestions for future holidays with friends and family, are all done with tongue- in- cheek humor. That dry wit of the British is the grabber here...even the glossary at the end of the book will have you smirking!

Lighthearted read....great for these sultry heat wave days of covid confinement.

This is a collection of letters from Nina back to her sister Vic written in the 1980's when she was a nanny in London. She was looking after Sam and Will, sons of Mary-Kay Wilmers who at the time was deputy editor of The London Review of Books. In the same street was [a:Claire Tomalin|18514|Claire Tomalin|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1361044853p2/18514.jpg] and [a:Alan Bennett|11781|Alan Bennett|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1234747177p2/11781.jpg], so Nina was surrounded by literary influences.

The letters are a raw and lightly edited collection of her thoughts, feelings and experiences that happened when she was nanny, from the absurd, Alan Bennet assisting with fixing household object to the surreal conversations that she has with the broad minded Mary-Kay Wilmers (MK in the book). As she settles in the area she begins to find her feet, and the letters detail the silly mistakes and life lessons that she learns and tells her sister about.

Half way through her stay she stars a degree at Thames Polytechnic and stops being a nanny. The letters still continue as she settles in to a different routine. In the letters home she describes her triumphs and her anxieties and the new friends that she has made. After a while she moves back in with the family and commutes to polytechnic.

Really a 2.5 star book. This both charmed and irritated in equal measure. I am not a huge fan of the epistolary style, i think that it can be used to enhance a book, but when it is the entire text then it gets a bit much. There were some very funny bits in the book, but I didn't like the conversations that were included in the letters. Whilst they filled in the gaps in the story, they grated after a while. That said, this book is worth reading; for a series of letters Stibble shows her raw potential as a writer with acute observations and wry humour, and a honesty and innocence that is fresh and startling.

This was such an enjoyable read. It's the sort of parochial humour that is best observed in England (at least in my opinion, though I am biased). Indeed, Lizzie is so good at observing the most trivial of details, and then relating those details in a blunt, droll manner that is guaranteed to make the reader laugh out loud all the way through. I loved seeing the world of dentistry (and Leicester) through her eyes. Though I am quite happy to never attend the practice of JP! The themes throughout the book, which mostly centered on acceptance of self, and others, and practicing kindness to all, were perfectly observed. Satisfyingly sweet without being cloying.

Now 18, Lizzie Vogel is looking for a full-time job and she is employed as a trainee dental nurse. Her boss is prejudiced and desperate to join the Freemasons, he's left his wife for his practice manager and now wants to get her pregnant. Lizzie is falling for Andy, someone she knew as a child but now a dental technician of note (and he rides a moped), but she also dreams of success as a writer.
Following on from Paradise Lodge Stibbe takes up the story of Lizzie on the cusp of womanhood as she explores independent living and sex in her own way. Lizzie is an engaging character and Stibbe's writing gives her a voice. Although rather idiosyncratic in the structure and narrative this is a mildly amusing look at life in the 1980s.

A lot like David Sedaris - it's a very funny memoir containing anecdotes of her family's British Christmases. Many of the references went over my head as I am an American (specifically a Californian) but I still found myself laughing out loud at several of the stories. I requested this from the library in early December but since it was new I didn't get it until late in January, but Christmas was so recent it didn't seem unusual to be reading about trees, puddings, turkey and re-gifting. In addition to the anecdotes, there is a glossary at the back with humorous definitions, referring back to the earlier chapters. It's the kind of book you want to read snippets to friends and relatives when you come across a particularly funny part.

I really liked this book. It was a quiet read with some very humorous parts. I got a good feel for the characters and was sad when it ended. I really liked living in their world for a bit!½

4 stars because one of the stories made me laugh until I had tears rolling down my face.
This is one of the funniest Christmas books that I’ve read, up there with David Sedaris’ Holidays on Ice.

This is a collection of short stories set at Christmastime. I think they were mostly true or based on truth.

I found one of the stories to be a bit sad but overall this was just really funny.

If you’re looking for a different Christmas story this season, pick this up. If you want a short, funny book, this is a great choice.

A collection of short stories and humorous essays about Christmas. Very British, moderately funny (I smiled several times, but never laughed outright). If you’re already feeling a little jaded with all the holiday cheer, this might suit your mood.½

Really charming and sweet and had me chuckling out loud at times. A nice easy read; great for when you're busy and can only read a little at a time but can also be hard to put down.

Read it for a book club. I think everyone else raved about it. I didn't find it so special.