Man at the Helm by Nina Stibbe
My sister and I and our little brother were born into a very good situation and apart from the odd new thing life was humdrum and comfortable until an evening in 1970 when my mother listened in to my father's phone call and ended up blowing her nose on a tea towel - a thing she'd only have done in an absolute emergency.
I can't remember a book that made me laugh more. . Man at the Helm is a winner - it even trumps Love, Nina * Observer *
A wicked anatomising of a dysfunctional family . . . Buoyantly comic: farcical yet tender, rude with a forgiving sweetness * Spectator *
Read it and be charmed. Just the right mixture of childhood innocence and incredulity for the necessary deadpan delivery of Stibbe's particular brand of comedy * Independent *
All hail a book that's funny! -- Barbara Trapido
[A] joyous read, full of wit and charm . . . I am already longing for Nina Stibbe's next book * Express *
A beguilingly comic blend of naivety and precociousness * Sunday Times *
Within a few pages I was completely caught up in the lives of Lizzie and her family . . . I couldn't have loved it more -- Lisa Jewell
Fantastic. Comical, moving and brilliantly evocative of British childhood * Glamour *
This book is very, very funny. Stibbe has a fine eye for absurdity, and her writing has an unforced charm. [And] there is real darkness here, which makes the humour shimmer all the more * Independent on Sunday *
Lizzie's voice is convincingly childlike but also confidently witty . . . What is most moving here - and what makes the book most similar to Love, Nina - is its celebration of the happiness possible within the family. Stibbe's feat is to remain unsentimentally barbed while subtly and triumphantly demonstrating the value of the kind of understated love found within the strangest and least obviously functional families * Telegraph *
Fans of Love, Nina will not be disappointed. Amusing, the writing is never less than accomplished * Daily Mail *
This densely populated coming-of-age story (for both mother and children) has retained and even expanded on Stibbe's signature antic charm ... The appeal of Stibbe's novel lies less in plotting than in the way she shades a sequence of comic vignettes with seriously sad undertones. It's not too much of a stretch to conclude that Man at the Helm, with its jauntily matter-of-fact social satire, wouldn't be out of place on the same shelf as Cold Comfort Farm and I Capture the Castle * New York Times *
A wicked anatomising of a dysfunctional family . . . Buoyantly comic: farcical yet tender, rude with a forgiving sweetness * Spectator *
Read it and be charmed. Just the right mixture of childhood innocence and incredulity for the necessary deadpan delivery of Stibbe's particular brand of comedy * Independent *
All hail a book that's funny! -- Barbara Trapido
[A] joyous read, full of wit and charm . . . I am already longing for Nina Stibbe's next book * Express *
A beguilingly comic blend of naivety and precociousness * Sunday Times *
Within a few pages I was completely caught up in the lives of Lizzie and her family . . . I couldn't have loved it more -- Lisa Jewell
Fantastic. Comical, moving and brilliantly evocative of British childhood * Glamour *
This book is very, very funny. Stibbe has a fine eye for absurdity, and her writing has an unforced charm. [And] there is real darkness here, which makes the humour shimmer all the more * Independent on Sunday *
Lizzie's voice is convincingly childlike but also confidently witty . . . What is most moving here - and what makes the book most similar to Love, Nina - is its celebration of the happiness possible within the family. Stibbe's feat is to remain unsentimentally barbed while subtly and triumphantly demonstrating the value of the kind of understated love found within the strangest and least obviously functional families * Telegraph *
Fans of Love, Nina will not be disappointed. Amusing, the writing is never less than accomplished * Daily Mail *
This densely populated coming-of-age story (for both mother and children) has retained and even expanded on Stibbe's signature antic charm ... The appeal of Stibbe's novel lies less in plotting than in the way she shades a sequence of comic vignettes with seriously sad undertones. It's not too much of a stretch to conclude that Man at the Helm, with its jauntily matter-of-fact social satire, wouldn't be out of place on the same shelf as Cold Comfort Farm and I Capture the Castle * New York Times *
Nina Stibbe was born in Leicester. She is the author of two works of non-fiction - Love, Nina and An Almost Perfect Christmas - and three previous novels: Man at the Helm, Paradise Lodge, and Reasons to be Cheerful, which is the only novel to have won both the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction and the Comedy Women in Print Award. Love, Nina won Non-Fiction Book of the Year and was adapted by Nick Hornby into a BBC TV series. Nina Stibbe lives in Cornwall.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780241967805 |
| ISBN 10 | 0241967805 |
| Title | Man at the Helm |
| Author | Nina Stibbe |
| Series | The Lizzie Vogel Series |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Penguin Books Ltd |
| Year published | 2015-06-18 |
| Number of pages | 320 |
| Prizes | Short-listed for Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize 2015 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |