Man at the Helm
The hilarious debut novel from one of Britain’s wittiest writers
$31.19
- Paperback
320 pages
- Release Date
18 June 2015
Summary
The funniest paperback of the year from Britain’s best new comic novelist
Meet Lizzie Vogel, 9.
Lizzie is concerned about her newly divorcee 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 and no one will let the children into the Brownies…
Book Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780241967805 |
|---|---|
| ISBN-10: | 0241967805 |
| Author: | Nina Stibbe |
| Publisher: | Penguin Books Ltd |
| Imprint: | Penguin Books Ltd |
| Format: | Paperback |
| Number of Pages: | 320 |
| Release Date: | 18 June 2015 |
| Weight: | 223g |
| Dimensions: | 197mm x 130mm x 20mm |
| Series: | The Lizzie Vogel Series |
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What They're Saying
Critics Review
I can’t remember a book that made me laugh more … Man at the Helm is a winner - it even trumps Love, Nina
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 JewellFantastic. 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 *
About The Author
Nina Stibbe
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 into a BBC TV series. Nina Stibbe lives in Cornwall.
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