Man at the Helm

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The book is not all funny as there is more serious and tender parts that really make you think and feel sorry for the characters . Clear and exact communication between the helmsman and officer on the bridge is essential to safe navigation and ship handling. Man is Stibbe's fictionalized account of her mother and siblings' post-divorce move to a small village where the locals routinely snub (and occasionally exploit) them. At one point the mother says one of the worst things in life is trying to get over bad things you have caused yourself. Stibbe scores many hits with this undoubtedly funny setup: her ear for off-kilter dialogue is as brilliantly tuned as it was in Love, Nina; and she is a maestro of bathos, continually undercutting vivid gaiety with moments of horrible sadness.

Man At The Helm - Radio 4 Sitcom - British Comedy Guide Man At The Helm - Radio 4 Sitcom - British Comedy Guide

La scorsa estate mi sono imbattuta, quasi per caso, in 'Love, Nina' e siccome non facevo altro che piangere, l'avevo trovato una boccata di ossigeno, un pomeriggio in cui ho riso abbastanza, mi sono divertita e ho trovato una mini serie tv piacevole e divertente. The village didn’t ‘come alive’ for me and I couldn’t really picture in my head any of the conversations the characters were having. The unique talent and gold standard of the author of humorous prose, her books largely have an autobiographical basis.For Stibbe, language – along with everything else – need not be self-important or taken too seriously (elsewhere, she tries out "fieldy" and then goes the whole hog with – wait for it– "schadenfreudy"). It's a very difficult thing to have your narrator be a young person and not have them come across as all ridiculous and precocious, I'm looking at you Flavia de Luce.

Man at the Helm,’ Nina Stibbe’s Comic First Novel Review: ‘Man at the Helm,’ Nina Stibbe’s Comic First Novel

This novel, as with her previous work, is easy to read and explores numerous characters, mainly through the eyes of the children of the piece, which gives it a simplistic quality but not to the detriment of either the story or the style in which it is written, nor does it treat the reader as "simplistic", quite the opposite in fact. I felt as if Lizzie was just talking at me the whole time and that there was no depth at all to any of the character interactions or indeed the scenery and setting in the book. Her children, meanwhile, battle on as best they can, doing both normal children-type things such as trying to make friends (Lizzie's encounters with the gruesome twins Melody and Miranda Longlady are a highlight) and less normal things, like running the household. Moreover, a rudder angle indicator that responds appropriately to the helm is part of the configuration. Similarly, a skilled helmsman will avoid overcompensating for a ship's movement caused by local conditions, such as wind, swells, currents, or rough seas.

We both rushed up the cabin stairs, naturally under the impression that one of our crew had fallen into the sea: an impression shared, I ought to add, by the man at the helm, who had given the alarm. If a lone female is left," says Lizzie's sister, "especially if divorced, without a man at the helm, all the friends and family and acquaintances run away. That comic edge is undoubtedly there, enhanced by a full-on display of evocative period detail (a fancy-dress parade to which Lizzie goes as Miss Decimal, dressed up in Bacofoil as a 50p piece; the comic Whizzer and Chips as a special treat; egg-and-bacon pie rebranded as quiche lorraine – this was the texture of a 70s childhood). Man at the Helm, the debut novel from Nina Stibbe - the much-loved author of Love, Nina - is a wildly comic, brilliantly sharp-eyed novel about the horrors of being an attractive divorcée in an English village in the 1970s, and a family's fall from grace .