Paradise Lodge

A riotous celebration of being very young and very old - and the laughter and the tears in betweenThis is the story of Lizzie Vogel, a 15 year old girl who finds herself working in an old people's home in the 1970s. The place is in chaos and it's not really a suitable job for a schoolgirl- she'd only gone for the job because it seemed too exhausting to commit to being a full-time girlfriend or a punk, and she doesn't realise there is a right and a wrong way to get someone out of a bath.Through a cast of wonderful characters, from the assertively shy Nurse who only communicates via little grunts to the very attractive son of the Chinese take away manager, Paradise Lodge is the story of being very young, and very old, and the laughter, and the tears, in between.

Short-listed for Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize 2017

“The funniest new writer to arrive in years”

LOVE it! Instant classic - funny, wise, touching, entirely delightful -- Marian Keyes
A new Nina Stibbe?! Best day ever -- Emma Healey
-- Andrew O’Hagan
The one problem with reviewing Stibbe is that I just want to quote entire pages: it's all so brilliant. She captures exactly what it's like to be a teenager, with all its contradictions, confusions, anxieties and ambitions. The i
There is a laugh out loud moment in every chapter. Paradise Lodge brilliantly captures the internal panic of a teenager -- Kathy Burke
A touch of Holden Caulfield in 1970s Leicestershire... I wouldn't mind fetching up at Paradise Lodge when my time comes: at least we'd all share a laugh, a hug and a terrible cup of tea before the dying of the light. -- Lee Langley Spectator
There is never a dull moment in this lively, sensitive, roaringly funny tale Daily Express
Stibbe looks at another chapter of her life through the prism of her trademark deadpan, acutely observed humour Stylist
Irreverent, warm and hugely entertaining Daily Mail
The whole book surprises and impresses... I'm not surprised to see that Stibbe's writing has been compared to Jane Austen's -- Emma Healey Guardian
Stibbe is a terrific writer with a gift for sharp dialogue Evening Standard
Laugh-out-loud funny and full of spot-on 1970s details Good Housekeeping
Stibbe is herself becoming a worthy successor to Pym, that peerless chronicler of the melancholy pleasures and small struggles of 20th-century English life on the sort of days when, as Lizzie puts it, "there was nothing for lunch except ginger cake and tins of marrowfat peas Financial Times
Winsomely naïve yet confident Sunday Times
Witty and thoroughly chortle inducing The Lady
A dollop of nostalgia and very British humour Glamour
Warm, funny story Elle

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.

'An instant classic - funny, wise, touching, entirely delightful' Marian Keyes Fifteen-year-old Lizzie Vogel should be in school. Instead she's working at the Paradise Lodge old people's home for 35p an hour. (To pay for coffee and shampoo, luxuries her bankrupt mother can't afford.) Unfortunately, Paradise Lodge is on the verge of its own insolvency and despite the restricted diet (apple-and-raisin pie, three times a day) and a rival old people's home stealing its residents, Lizzie must somehow keep her charges alive, her mother sane (or at least off the drugs) and outwit the school head who's noted her absence. It's a lot of work for a regular supply of Linco Beer Shampoo . . . 'Keenly observed and sparkling with Stibbe's trademark deadpan humour. A quintessentially English social comedy: a novel that revels in the comic - and occasionally tragic - minutiae of everyday life' Observer 'Unforgettable: touching, funny, grotesque and brimful of real and surprising characters' Irish Times 'A touch of Holden Caulfield in 1970s Leicestershire... I wouldn't mind fetching up at Paradise Lodge when my time comes: at least we'd all share a laugh, a hug and a terrible cup of tea before the 'dying of the light' Lee Langley, Spectator

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