Man at the Helm
The hilarious debut novel from one of Britain’s wittiest writers
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Penguin Books Ltd
Published:18th Jun '15
£9.99
Available for immediate dispatch.
When their parents split up nine-year-old Lizzie Vogel, her sister and brother move with their mother to a slightly hostile village in the English countryside.
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.
The very start of Lizzie Vogel's story. From the much-loved author of Love, Nina, discover a wildly comic, brilliantly sharp-eyed novel about one family's fall from grace.
'All hail a book that's funny!' Barbara Trapido
*****
Meet Lizzie Vogel, 9.
Lizzie is concerned about her newly divorced mother; thirty-one years old and trapped in a hostile village in the English countryside with only three young children and a Labrador for company. It isn't that having a husband is good, but in 1970s rural Leicestershire, not having one is bad. The women in the village think Lizzie's mother is after their husbands - and no one will let the children into the Brownies!
Worried about their mother's drinking, her (bad) playwriting and social workers sending them off to the infamous Crescent Home for Children, Lizzie and her sister embark on a misguided campaign to find their mother a new husband.
LIZZIE'S STORY CONTINUES IN PARADISE LODGE AND REASONS TO BE CHEERFUL!
*****
'[A] joyous read, full of wit and charm . . . I am already longing for Nina Stibbe's next book' OBSERVER
'Just the right mixture of childhood innocence and incredulity for the necessary deadpan delivery of Stibbe's particular brand of comedy. Read it and be charmed' INDEPENDENT
'A beguilingly comic blend of naivety and precociousness' SUNDAY TIMES
NINA STIBBE'S NEW NOVEL ONE DAY I SHALL ASTONISH THE WORLD IS AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER NOW
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 *
- Short-listed for Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize 2015
ISBN: 9780241967805
Dimensions: 198mm x 130mm x 20mm
Weight: 223g
320 pages