Changes

|title=Love, Nina

|author=Nina Stibbe

|publisher=Viking

|date=November 2013

|summary=A book that unexpectedly grew on me - irreverent, funny and unusual, definitely worth a read!

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When I began reading this book I wasn't entirely sure that I liked it. I didn't quite know how to take the Nina from the title. She's a twenty year old Nanny, employed by the editor of the London Review of Books and living near Regent's Park in North London. The book contains her letters to her sister, Victoria living at home in Leicestershire, and tell of the events and happenings in her life as a Nanny and then, going on, in her life as a student at Thames Polytechnic. Initially it felt like she was name dropping - Alan Bennett lives over the road and drops in for dinner most days; the father of Will and Sam, the two boys she is nannying, is Stephen Frears; down the road lives Claire Tomalin and her partner Michael Frayn...and yet, given chance, you begin to see that she isn't awed by the notoriety of these people (indeed, she tells her sister that Alan Bennett was in Coronation Street!) and actually they are just the neighbours and so it is less important that Alan Bennett (AB as he's referred to in the book) comes around for dinner every night since he isn't there for fame value but rather for his own unique place in this rather crazy family life memoir!

She captures characters, creating them in your head so you really feel like you know them. She has a real knack for letter writing, and I feel sad that nowadays she's probably, like the rest of us, emailing her correspondence which just isn't quite the same as someone putting pen to paper. Her conversations with the boys are funny - if only all Nannying jobs came with charges like them! And the undercurrents of romance between Nina and Nunney (a friend and helper round at the Tomalin's house) are also funny and sweet. I suppose there will be readers who don't fancy an autobiography of literary North London. And there will be those who can't be doing with an entire book of letters. And of course others who take offence at the swearing. If none of the above sound like you though, give this a try. I was surprised by just how much I enjoyed it.

{{amazontext|amazon=0670922765}}