One Day I Shall Astonish the World

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As a comic novelist, Stibbe is so truly incomparable, I can only describe this perfect novel as Stibbe meets Stibbe, with a touch of Stibbe. (And if you love Nina Stibbe...you'll love this.) For as long as I could make it last, the world just felt a bit nicer. A true gift of a novel, I utterly adored it -- Meg Mason Later sections that chart the pandemic at first seem tokenistic, but Stibbe ties it all together in this moving ode to marriage and friendship, to lives unlived, chances untaken, and the great joke of agency in a world where everything can turn upside down in a heartbeat. Sarah Gilmartin Nina Stibbe's latest novel, One Day I Shall Astonish the World buttresses her position as the Kingsley Amis of the twenty-first century. . . . Stibbe's genius, like Amis's, is for noting the cadences of ordinary speech and the idiotic platitudes we all spout. In the anatomy of English conversation, Stibbe (born 1962) takes up where Amis (died 1995) left off. There are echoes of Adrian Mole, Alan Bennett and Victoria Wood - but with no copying or pastiche. Stibbe makes the everyday funny. If a Martian asked me to explain the tragicomedy of normal English life, I would direct him to Stibbe -- Harry Mount * Spectator, 2022 Books of the Year *

Nina Stibbe's new novel is the story of the wonderful and sometimes surprising path of friendship: from its conspiratorial beginnings, along its irritating wrong turns, to its final gratifying destination. About This Edition ISBN: I properly hooted with laughter reading this book and there are times when a single line gave me such a catch in my throat I thought I would cry. It's perfection. For beautifully funny and well-observed comic writing, Nina Stibbe is your go-to author. In her latest release, a tale of lifelong friendship between Susan and Norma, she explores the mistakes, rivalries and love we all experience in life— Stylist There are times where it feels as though Stibbe is about to dig into darker territory, particularly in repeated references to Susan’s dysfunctional childhood and her mother having had an accident, after which she developed a West Country accent and would make lewd gestures in public, though these strands are left dangling. And the final chapters, in which Roy is hospitalised with Covid-19, feel like the start of an entirely different book. Certainly, Susan’s idle observations about her “clinically irritating” sister-in-law, or her husband’s ex who “once forced a boyfriend to the cinema at knife point to see a film he didn’t fancy” made me bark with laughter.Nina Stibbe takes on female friendship and ambition in a novel that has all its predecessors' gossipy bookishness and quirky charm' Observer I’m such a big fan of Nina Stibbe’s memoir Love, Nina, but for some unexamined reason I had never read any of her fiction. There is the same warm voice in this book - narrated by a middle-aged female protagonist of middle age, presumably not so different from the author herself - and the same appreciation for life’s absurdities, but somehow it just wasn’t as successful at winning me over. This bit of arch comedy, where the reader clearly knows more than the character, comes from Susan, wife of Roy, mother of teenager Honey, and the altogether charming protagonist of Nina Stibbe’s new novel One Day I Shall Astonish the World. It is the haberdashers and caterers, the grounds managers and teenagers, the people who run pet shops and the policemen who make this book soar.

I love Nina Stibbe and her new novel, One Day I Shall Astonish the World, is such a lovingly observed testament to the complexities and profundities of female friendship' Elizabeth Day Stibbe writes some of the best-turned comic sentences in contemporary writing. Like Susan, she makes it look easier than it must be. * Sunday Times * Funny, kind, sad, relevant, and raucous in all the right places. I loved it so much -- Daisy BuchananNina Stibbe is the hero of finding your voice…She puts words together with an immaculate ear for the absurd, mixing satire and bathos, juxtaposing quirkily unlike objects and sentiments in sentences so funny you howl with laughter. But underneath is a sharp-eyed, non-judgmental message about tolerating other people – people very different from yourself…her new novel is Elena Ferrante re-scripted as English comedy…wayward, wildly original and beautifully noticing.”— THE TELEGRAPH I love Nina Stibbe and her new novel, One Day I Shall Astonish the World, is such a lovingly observed testament to the complexities and profundities of female friendship -- Elizabeth Day As a comic novelist, Stibbe is so truly incomparable, I can only describe this perfect novel as Stibbe meets Stibbe, with a touch of Stibbe. (And if you love Nina Stibbe…you’ll love this.) For as long as I could make it last, the world just felt a bit nicer. A true gift of a novel, I utterly adored it."— MEG MASON, author of Sorrow and Bliss It’s notable that the haberdashers where the women met was called The Pin Cushion, a role that life seems intent on foisting upon Susan. Early on, she’s compelled to drop out of university. While Norma, who remains an enigmatic figure, goes on to have a glamorous academic career, Susan finds herself with a husband and child, yearning for nothing loftier than a pine front door (theirs is plastic) and a vegetable medley (she’s married a man who’ll eat only iceberg lettuce and baked beans). If ever there were a time for reading Stibbe, it’s surely now. Not for nothing was her last novel titled Reasons to Be Cheerful. And yet while comparisons with Alan Bennett, Sue Townsend or even Victoria Wood remain apt, Stibbe applies her own darkly distinctive touches. In the grandest house in town, for instance, the only comfort comes from the distant rumble of lorries on the bypass. Its largely ridiculous owner is memorable for an ability to imitate a crying baby, leaving Susan wondering whether he’d simply never stopped. It was “authentic and haunting and somehow tragic”, all words that are applicable to the quirky, absurdist world created here.

In April look out for... Love, Nina writer Nina Stibbe's One Day I Shall Astonish The World * Daily Mirror, What's Hot in 2022 * Nina Stibbe's very funny novels are full of charm, and her latest brilliantly captures the mordant humour of British suburban life. Through the 90s to the present day, it follows Susan from her job in a haberdashery shop to working at the local university, and the ebbs and flows of her relationships with her husband and best friend * Evening Standard, Best Fiction Books to Look Forward to in 2022 *One Day I Shall Astonish the World is a book that took me a while to get into. We chart the main character Susan’s life in the 1990s through to the present day, as an older woman. We experience alongside her an array of key milestones such as meeting her husband Roy, forming key friendships, and having her first child. An angry, powerful book seething with love and outrage for a community too often stereotyped or ignored.