Cette série explore l'éveil d'une jeune fille confrontée aux dures réalités de la campagne anglaise des années 1970. Après la séparation de ses parents, elle et ses frères et sœurs emménagent avec leur mère dans un nouveau village, faisant face à des difficultés, notamment les luttes de leur mère avec l'alcool et l'écriture de pièces de théâtre. Les enfants tentent d'améliorer leur situation en trouvant un nouveau partenaire pour leur mère afin d'éviter l'intervention des services sociaux. Ces histoires sont riches en humour noir, en observations pointues et en représentations des luttes familiales et des défis sociétaux.
Lizzie is concerned about her newly divorcée mother - thirty-one years old, with three young children and a Labrador in a hostile village in the English countryside. 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 while no one will let the children into the Brownies. And so Lizzie and her sister embark on a misguided campaign to find a new 'Man at the Helm'
Lizzie Vogel's story continues in Paradise Lodge, the brilliantly comic sequel to Nina Stibbe's hilarious Man at the Helm. 'LOVE it! Instant classic - funny, wise, touching, entirely delightful' MARIAN KEYES ***** Working in a care home is not really a suitable job for a schoolgirl but 15-year-old Lizzie Vogel went for it. It just seemed too exhausting to commit to being a full-time girlfriend or a punk (it is the 1970s after all), plus she has some knowledge of old people. They're not suited to granary bread, and you mustn't compare them to toddlers, but she doesn't know there's a right way to get someone out of the bath - or what to do when someone dies. When a rival old people's home with better parking and daily chairobics threatens to take all their residents, Paradise Lodge's cast of staff and helpers have to come together to save the home before it's too late. From the bestselling author of Love, Nina comes a story of being very young, and very old, and the laughter and tears in between. LIZZIE'S STORY CONTINUES IN REASONS TO BE CHEERFUL! ***** 'The one problem with reviewing Stibbe is that I just want to quote entire pages: it's all so brilliant' THE I 'Stibbe looks at another chapter of her life through the prism of her trademark deadpan, acutely observed humour' STYLIST 'A dollop of nostalgia and very British humour' GLAMOUR NINA STIBBE'S NEW NOVEL ONE DAY I SHALL ASTONISH THE WORLD IS AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER NOW
'When people in the village heard I was about to start working in the city they tried to unsettle me with tales of woe. The sun, blotted out by the tall buildings, couldn't shine and the rain was poisoned by the toxic fumes that poured from the sock factories. My skin would be covered in pimples from the hell of it all'So begins a young woman's journey to adulthood. Lizzie Vogel leaves her alcoholic, novel-writing mother and heads for Leicester to work for a racist, barely competent dentist obsessed with joining the freemasons.Soon Lizzie is heading reluctantly, if at top speed, into the murky depths of adult life: where her driving instructor becomes her best friend; her first boyfriend prefers birdwatching to sex and where independence for a teenage girl might just be another word for loneliness.In Reasons to Be Cheerful Nina Stibbe shows her extraordinary gift for illuminating the vital details which make us human. She is that rare writer who makes us laugh whilst reminding us of the joy, and the pain, of being alive.
