Nina: Despatches from Family Life, Love

REVIEWED BY LAURA

This is a quirky and charming little book, composed entirely of Nina Stibbe's letters to her sister Victoria after she moved to London to be a nanny. Nina's letters aren't really like any letters I've read before, and they're very unlike letters I would write. Nina is hilarious and she has a keen ear for dialogue. She observes the most unusual things and manages to make the most mundane tasks funny (see excerpt below regarding laundering pillows). Throughout the book, she includes lots of little mini-dialogues between her and Mary-Kay (MK, her boss) and Sam and Will (her charges). For example:

MK: What are these?

Me: Pillows.

MK: Yes, but why have I got them? Where are my usual ones?

Me: Sam's probably got your usual ones.

MK: So what are these?

Me: I think they might be the ones I laundered.

MK: Laundered?

Me: Took to the launderette.

MK: Are they washable?

Me: Not as such, but it was kill or cure.

MK: It was kill.

To find that little vignette I literally just turned to a random page in the book. I find exchanges like this so charming because I would never think to write about a conversation like that in a letter, but it so perfectly illustrates the things that make up daily life. Her writing also made me really want to be a fly on the wall in that house so I could listen in on the razor sharp wit.

I should tell you that Mary-Kay is Mary-Kay Wilmers, who at that time was the editor of the London Review of Books. She is friends with several of the literary/cultural elite of London in the 1980s--Alan Bennett, Jonathan Miller, Claire Tomalin--most of whom stop by the house regularly. (The only one of those I had heard of before reading the book was Alan Bennett, because of his recent book The Uncommon Reader.) So this isn't just any household that Nina has found herself in--she ends up rubbing elbows with some pretty famous people.

This is a fairly breezy read--there's not much plot, per se, although I did become invested in the boys and Mary-Kay and I couldn't help but root for Nina as she began studying at university. But it's not really a page turner...it's more of a quiet and thoughtful book, perfect if you don't want anything too heavy or just have a few minutes to read (the letters are short, so it's easy to read a few in a short time). You could say it is "light reading" at its best.

The book has gotten quite a few absolutely glowing reviews, and while I liked it and enjoyed reading it, I didn't LOVE it. There is a lot in this book that feels like "inside baseball," meaning that I bet this book is infinitely more fun to read if you happen to have come of age in England in the 1980s. There are so many cultural and political references, as well as the ins and outs of living in England during that time, that I just couldn't fully appreciate (not having come of age in England in the 1980s).

I always get a little sad when I read these kinds of books because nobody seems to write letters anymore, do they? (It's all texting now, isn't it?) It's too bad, because letters are so fun...and it was fun to look back at how the letters included in this book told the story of Nina and her life through small glimpses. Let's just say I don't think anyone will ever compile a book of text messages...

BOTTOM LINE
Recommended for light and fun reading, especially if you happen to have grown up in England in the 1980s. I think this would be a great beach read or a book to read when you want something that you can dip into and out of easily. Parts are very, very funny and made me want to live with Mary-Kay, Sam, Will, and Nina.

RATING: B

Note: I received a review copy of this title courtesy of the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Nina Stibbe moves to an upscale neighborhood in North London to become a nanny to Mary-Kay Wilmers, a single mother and editor of London Review of Books. She writes home to her sister, Victoria, "Being a nanny is great. Not like a job really. Just like living in someone else's life." Her charges are Mary-Kay's two sons, Sam and Will. Nine-year-old Will is the worrier; it’s 1982, and he’s concerned about nuclear war. Sam is 10 ½ and has some physical disabilities that aren't named. Appearing to take his condition in stride most of the time, he’s a keen observer who seems wise beyond his years.

The neighborhood is a Who's Who of literary and creative types. Alan Bennett, playwright and actor, drops in often, especially at meal time. Nina wrote Victoria that he starred in the long-running and very popular British soap opera “Coronation Street,” but she is incorrect. Jonathan Miller, actor and opera director, is another neighbor whose occupation Nina gets wrong. Eventually, she sorts it all out and comes to really enjoy being in the company of this eclectic group of folks. Her observations and descriptions of the friends and neighbors who come and go from the Wilmers household are fresh and unedited. She writes that Mary-Kay, Sam and William all have basin (bowl) haircuts, Mary-Kay often cusses, and privileged folks don't talk about money. She introduces her charges to Toffos, which Will decides are "just naked Rolos," and describes the men Mary-Kay dates.

Nina's letters to Victoria are full of opinions and bits of conversations about daily life. Nina dyes her plimsoles (sneakers) a greeny-blue in the washer, and then all the laundry seems to be a bit greeny-bluish. She is sent to the Millers to borrow a saw to trim the trunk of the Christmas tree, and the family misplaces it. Bottles of milk arrive regularly on their doorstep, but never a milk bill, even though Mary-Kay reminds the milkman. Meal-time conversations might be about the digestive system, pie fillings, a neighbor's large behind, or how to cuss in German. Children the ages of Sam and Will are keen observers of human nature, and their running commentaries are usually spot-on.

This peek into the domestic life of Mary-Kay, her children and their neighbors is quite interesting. Nina's descriptions are simple yet accurate, and readers feel like a fly on the wall. It would be interesting to dine with the family, even though Nina puts tinned tomatoes in the Hunter's Stew, which Alan Bennett considers a mistake.

Reviewed by Carole Turner

A former babysitter gave me this and said it reminded her of us, and I was massively flattered,

and hope some day she will write a tell-all about how I brought her back to the dark side of

bacon-eating after her flirtation with veganism. But really I related to Nina as much as to her

boss, and loved all the little funny missives about the two boys in her charge, and her finally

making it to college, and just how she grew up in those couple of years in London in the 1980s.

This is an “open it and read a page” book—if you like one page, you’ll like it all.

I just finished reading Love, Nina and was charmed. It took awhile to get into it because it's an odd format: a series of letters (from Nina to her sister). She describes the goings on at 55 Gloucester Crescent but mostly it's the tidbits of dialogue that are the most charming. Over time you get to know the different characters and the relationships between them. I felt like I was sitting in the kitchen with all of them, and i was sad to see them go at the end. even though it is 30 years later, i imagine them still there, talking silliness, with Will and Sam age 9 and 10, Alan Bennett dropping by for dinner, MK, Nina and Nunney.

This book will be this year's christmas book - the book i give to my mom and close friends.

In 1982, Nina Stibbe moved from Leicestershire to London to take a job as a nanny. From 1982 until 1987, she worked as a nanny and went on to a polytechnic school. During this time, she wrote very frequent and detailed letters to her sister, Victoria. Love, Nina is a compilation of these letters. Nina describes being a nanny as "just like living in someone else's life" and this is exactly what readers are treated to in this novel. Nothing outrageous or sensational happens, but there are some funny parts and a few great one-liners. Overall though, reading this book was reminiscent of looking through someone else's photo albums. It is quite nice to see a few pages, but after a little while, you just want to skip to the end. That aside, I do think that the writing has a nice flow to it, so I would be interested in reading Ms. Stibbe's first work of fiction due to be published in the US in 2015.

I just finished reading Love, Nina and was charmed. It took awhile to get into it because it's an odd format: a series of letters (from Nina to her sister). She describes the goings on at 55 Gloucester Crescent but mostly it's the tidbits of dialogue that are the most charming. Over time you get to know the different characters and the relationships between them. I felt like I was sitting in the kitchen with all of them, and i was sad to see them go at the end. even though it is 30 years later, i imagine them still there, talking silliness, with Will and Sam age 9 and 10, Alan Bennett dropping by for dinner, MK, Nina and Nunney.

This book will be this year's christmas book - the book i give to my mom and close friends.

In 1982, Nina Stibbe moved from Leicestershire to London to take a job as a nanny. From 1982 until 1987, she worked as a nanny and went on to a polytechnic school. During this time, she wrote very frequent and detailed letters to her sister, Victoria. Love, Nina is a compilation of these letters. Nina describes being a nanny as "just like living in someone else's life" and this is exactly what readers are treated to in this novel. Nothing outrageous or sensational happens, but there are some funny parts and a few great one-liners. Overall though, reading this book was reminiscent of looking through someone else's photo albums. It is quite nice to see a few pages, but after a little while, you just want to skip to the end. That aside, I do think that the writing has a nice flow to it, so I would be interested in reading Ms. Stibbe's first work of fiction due to be published in the US in 2015.

Love, Nina: A Nanny Writes Home by Nina Stibbe is a memoir in the form of letters. Each letter is written by Nina, a young woman living in London during the 1980s and working as a nanny for a single mother and her two very intelligent and entertaining sons. Nina shares short, slice-of-life vignettes and snatches of dialogue in the letters that she writes to her sister back home. I enjoyed this book a lot (I'm always a fan of books made up of correspondence!) but it definitely wasn’t a quick read for me. There were so many British terms and slang that weren’t familiar to me at all, and I found that this really slowed me down. Aside from that, though, the many short samples of dialogue throughout the book were WONDERFUL! Dialogue is often a big deal-breaker for me—if it doesn’t ring true, I’m probably not going to be a fan of the book. In this case, Stibbe totally captures the different people in her day to day life—especially the two young boys she’s caring for. Much of their dialogue was laugh-out-loud funny—even with the unfamiliar slang!

A very enjoyable, honest look at an unusual household from the nanny's point of view. The boys are natural and entertaining, and their mother refreshingly free of cant.
Nina is a natural storyteller from a very different background She is gradually influenced by her new London surroundings and the prominent people she comes in contact with there but remains grounded. The book is in the form of her letters to her sister who has remained in Leicester, and the exchange of recipes reflects Nina's evolution as a cook and otherwise. She is intelligent and outgrows her nanny job to study at university.
A thoroughly entertaining book. I laughed aloud at times.

I was a little disappointed, having read the description and some reviews. It is too disjointed. The reader also had to keep referring to the cast of characters to keep people straight. Unless the reader is familiar with the people to whom Nina refers, he would not understand some of the references and the significance of events. Many terms would be unfamiliar to a reader who has not been to England, or has not read much about it. Also, the British humor is different. I appreciate it, but many in our book club did not.

Stibbe has done the impossible. She has made it interesting to read a batch of letters. These are letters from the author to her sister and believe it or not, I had to read all of them because there was so much interesting things going on between the characters I could not put it down.

J. Robert Ewbank author "John Wesley, Natural Man, and the Isms" "Wesley's Wars" and "To Whom It May Concern"

I kept waiting for this book to get interesting but it never did. Lots of "letters" filled with boring and tedious comments about characters we simply never know enough about to care about, or even know who they are.

Paradise Lodge is better.

Enjoyable read; I was laughing out loud regularly. Also made me consider if I'm taking "parenting" a bit too seriously. Not that I'd use such explicit language with my kids, but maybe not be quite so anxious about always being that model parent.

This novel would have received more stars, but I found the letter format annoying. I would just get interested in a bit of something and the letter would end. It was entertaining once you can get past all the F-bombs ( quite the norm in England). It definitely has a literary bent, so if you are not up on your literature, this one may leave you in the dust. Lots of British references that I didn't know, so I am sure I missed out on some of the other humorous intent.

As per the reviews I thought this would be delightful and fun, partly because I was an American living in London not long before the time covered in the letters in the book...but really, it wasn't that engaging or charming or any of the things the critics claimed. There were famous people mentioned so I suppose some care about that...but otherwise not really worth the energy.

As a charming indirect picture of the literary classes this was quite a novel presentation. As a portrait of the author, much less so, as we learnt so little about her actual feelings outside of the narrowest of fields. But a fun read nonetheless and worth it for the sly portrait of AB.

Who would have thought letters between two sisters would be so entertaining and enjoyable. These letters were written in the 1980's and in today's world would not exist because they would be replaced by phone calls. We follow Nina in her job as a nanny with her charges, Will and Sam in London, and her sister, Vic, a nurse still at home in Lichestershire. A good read.

I may be biased as any book which mentions having Alan Bennett as a neighbor will grab me from the start, but this one is truly a gem. Wildly , gaily written with charm to make you happy. Just buy it.

This book is sweet, brilliantly witty, full of love of children and eccentric neighbors. The sophistication of it had me reeling and laughing and wishing I could be part of this wonderfully smart and loving extended family.

Adored this book. It's delightfully charming in its realness. The descriptions of daily activities and daily interactions are funny and quirky, and so ridiculously British. The sarcasm and wit is perfect and it was a breeze to read. Definitely recommend this book, for some laugh out loud one liners!

A fun read. It is interesting and well written, I like the author's perspective (or lack of) and her narrative style. The dialogues are hilarious. It is a fresh and unpretentious book, which is hard to find these days.

Charming, funny and easy to read. A window into the lives of a literary family and their nanny (the author) and friends in London in the 80's. All of them seem to have a dry sense of humour which is amusing and entertaining - mind you I'm from Australia and I "get" British humour. Recommended!

I wanted to like this book, I really did. Actually, I chose it because I loved the cover. Very clever. Perhaps it is because I am not British, but I could not relate to the author's "humor". There are so many other wonderful books out there to read. This book is not one of them.