Love, Nina

by Nina Stibbe

* * * WINNER OF THE 2014 NATIONAL BOOK AWARDS POPULAR NON-FICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR * * *

'I adored this book, and I could quote from it forever. It's real, odd, life-affirming, sharp, loving, and contains more than one reference to Arsenal FC' Nick Hornby,The Believer

'Adrian Mole meets Mary Poppins mashed up in literary north London . . . Enormous fun' Bookseller

'What a beady eye she has for domestic life, and how deliciously fresh and funny she is' Deborah Moggach, author of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

Nina Stibbe's Love, Nina: Despatches from Family Life is the laugh-out-loud story of the trials and tribulations of a very particular family.

In the 1980s Nina Stibbe wrote letters home to her sister in Leicester describing her trials and triumphs as a nanny to a London family. There's a cat nobody likes, a visiting dog called Ted Hughes (Ted for short) and suppertime visits from a local playwright. Not to mention the two boys, their favourite football teams, and rude words, a very broad-minded mother and assorted nice chairs.

From the mystery of the unpaid milk bill and the avoidance of nuclear war to mealtime discussions on pie filler, the greats of English literature, swearing in German and sexually transmitted diseases, Love, Nina is a wonderful celebration of bad food, good company and the relative merits of Thomas Hardy and Enid Blyton.

'Breezy, sophisticated, hilarious, rude and aching with sweetness: Love, Nina might be the most charming book I've ever read' Maria Semple, author of 'Where'd You Go, Bernadette'

'Nina Stibbe is the funniest new writer to arrive in years. Love, Nina is her first book - a memoir so warm, so witty and so wise, it's like finding the friend you always deserved' Andrew O'Hagan

At the age of 20 Nina Stibbe moved from Leicestershire to London to become a nanny. Later she studied at Thames Polytechnic and worked in publishing. In 2014 her debut novel Man at the Helm was published. Love, Nina won the 2014 National Book Awards for Popular Non-Fiction Book of the Year. She now lives in Cornwall with her partner and children.

• ISBN10: 1306761344
• ISBN13: 9781306761345
• Publish Date: 1 January 2014 (first published 7 November 2013)
• Publish Status: Active
• Out of Print: 19 May 2015
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Little Brown and Company
• Format: eBook
• Language: English

Reviews

[brokentune]

I picked up this book because I watched the series based on it on Netflix the other week and really liked it - probably because of the cast (Helena Bonham Carter played Mary-Kay Wilmers).

The book, however, was a different story. For some reason the story works on tv, but in epistolary novel format reads like a mildly amusing but gratingly inconsequential run down of stories that try to re-imagine Willy Russell's Educating Rita (but set in London) with added name-dropping of the London literati.

I'll give Stibbe's other books a miss.