Love, Nina

Love, Nina

Despatches from Family Life

Summary

WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARDS POPULAR NON-FICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR 2014

A laugh-out-loud true story of the trials and tribulations of being a live-in nanny in 1980s London and inspired a major TV series starring Helena Bonham Carter.

*****

In 1982 Nina Stibbe, a 20-year-old from Leicester, moved to London to work as a nanny for a very particular family. It was a perfect match: Nina had no idea how to cook, look after children or who the weirdos were who called round. And the family, busy discussing such arcane subjects as how to swear in German or the merits (or otherwise) of turkey mince, were delighted by her lack of skills.

Love, Nina is the collection of letters she wrote home gloriously describing her 'domestic' life, the unpredictable houseguests and the cat everyone loved to hate.

*****

'I adored this book and could quote from it forever' Nick Hornby

'Funny and sharp: no book this year has made me laugh more' John Lanchester, Guardian

'The funniest book I've read in ages' Sunday Times

'An unassuming comic genius'
Independent

Reviews

  • I adored this book, and could quote from it forever. It's real, odd, life-affirming, sharp, loving, and contains more than one reference to Arsenal FC
    Nick Hornby, The Believer

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 by Nick Hornby into a BBC TV series. Nina Stibbe lives in Cornwall.
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