Love, Nina

The choice to have the author read her collection of entertaining letters to her sister Victoria was a good one. In 1982, Stibbe worked in London as a nanny in the home of book editor Mary-Kay Wilmers. Stibbe's subdued but engaged reading brings out every emotion as she reveals the mundane, intimate, and humorous details of life with the Wilmers family and friends, who included the famous playwright Alan Bennett. Stibbe's vocal inflections reveal that she's enjoying reliving her memories, and her tone makes the reading sound very authentic--as if one is listening to a friend read a private and fascinating diary. M.M.G. © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine

Starred review from April 1, 2014
With a who's who at the beginning that ranges from film director Stephen Frears to Maxwell, the author's ex-pony, you might guess this is not your typical memoir. Not only that, but it comprises the tuneful, descriptive letters Nina wrote in the 1980s, while she tried her hand at nannying in London, to her sister, Vic, who stayed basically at home, near Leicestershire, England. The nannied children were young Sam and Will Frearstheir arty, daffy children's conversations fill the pagesliving with their sharp, blunt mother, Mary-Kay Wilmers, deputy editor of the London Review of Books. Nina herself, then just 20 and new to the task of being a nanny, was a lover of London and quite the observer, documenting for her sister back home the who, the when, and her full-blown, clever, open-eyed take on the what of life at the Wilmers-Frears. Stibbe notes that nannying is not like a job really, just like living in someone else's life, but what a funny, artist-filled life she lived, and how well she watched and participated. This is an offbeat paean to families, real and cobbled-together, to sisters and siblings, and to communicating with love. It's also a rare and wholly delectable epistolary slice of life.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)