Product Description
Man at the Helm
Author: Nina Stibbe
Format: Paperback
The hilarious debut novel from one of Britain’s wittiest writers
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
About the Author
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.
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