Nina Stibbe
Most acclaimed
Reasons to be cheerful
2001
Taking a job as an assistant to an eccentric dental surgeon, eighteen-year-old Lizzie pursues a fantasy relationship with her crush before realizing that he is not quite as imagined. Lizzie Vogel lands a job in a local dentist's office after answering a classified ad. The job comes with an apartment of her own, as well as an eccentric boss, a high-strung coworker, and the occasional call to perform light dentistry herself. It also provides Lizzie with an introduction to Andy Nicolello: handsome, kind, slightly indifferent. Lizzie begins calling him her boyfriendeven though they have never so much as kissed or sat next to each other on the sofa. Navigating the new waters of adult life (conquering homesickness, learning to drive, hosting a dinner party, making bold-or tragic, depending on the viewer-fashion choices), Lizzie arrives at an unexpected, and unexpectedly moving, destination. -- adapted from jacket
Love, Nina
In 1982, 20-year-old Nina Stibbe moved to London to work as a nanny to two opinionated and lively young boys. In frequent letters home to her sister, Nina described her trials and triumphs.
Paradise Lodge
Fifteen-year-old Lizzie Vogel takes a job as an "auxiliary nurse" at Paradise Lodge, a home for the elderly, and learns that her job entails helping the patients (frequently) to the bathroom. What begins as a way to avoid school and earn some spending money (for the finer things in life, like real coffee and beer shampoo) quickly becomes the education of a lifetime as Lizzy wades through the day-to-day humdrum and drama of this ramshackle refuge for the elderly. And when a rival nursing home threatens, Lizzie discovers that the staff and residents of Paradise Lodge have become her surrogate family, and the only place she's ever felt she belongs--