Will I love Love, Nina?

This isn’t a novel but a collection of Nina’s letters back home to her sister in Leicester when she was thrown into the thick of literary north London in the 1980s. Young Nina has taken a job as a nanny and is suddenly expected to create edible meals (there’s a lot of turkey mince) and fit into a very different household to the one she grew up in.

I love how Nina is shocked and delighted by how much garlic they use while cooking, and her relationship with the two boys she looks after had me chuckling throughout. The… show more.

I greatly admire people who are ‘themselves’ in every situation and whoever they are talking to. People who don’t tie themselves in knots thinking about what the ‘right’ thing to say is and who don’t pretend to be someone they are not. The author of this book of letters home to her sister is–I think–someone like that.

And that’s why this book is so amusing and a huge comfort read that I repeatedly turn to. It’s Nina, from Leicester, coming to live and work in London for the first time as a nanny to two boys. She doesn’t care about… show more.

Isn’t it wonderful when you find a new author that just springs your heart open, and even better, you learn she has a pile of other books you can read written by her? This is what happened with Love, Nina. I regularly read book reviews in British newspapers and kept coming across Stibbe’s name with regard to “comedy of manners.” I had exhausted Barbara Pym, Dodie Smith, Mavis Cheek, and Elinor Lipman. Into my second year of widowhood, I needed their wise humor.

To my surprise, this book is a memoir based on actual letters she had written to… show more.