One Day I shall Astonish the World, Nina Stibbe
I was looking forward to reading this because I like Nina Stibbe’s writing. The title is the motto of the fictional Midlands university around which much of the action takes place. If there is a plot, it’s about the on-off friendship between two women over many years. Susan meets Norma when she has a part-time job with the latter’s parents. She’s at the university when she gets pregnant and drops out. After that, she is a housewife and mother, living right opposite the university. Norma disapproves. Later, Susan gets a job as PA to the Vice Chancellor but whatever she does, Norma seems to go one better, just doing whatever she pleases and damn everyone else. It’s sometimes hard to see how Susan still thinks of her as her closest friend.
Stibbe’s gift is to have developed a very flat style of writing which describes what most people would regard as bizarre events as if they were perfectly normal. I’m slightly reminded of Anne Tyler (a huge compliment) although Stibbe is not as good. Don’t read this looking for excitement and interesting plot developments. It’s a slice of life: ordinary people who are not so ordinary after all. Who is? The sudden arrival of the Coronavirus towards the end of the book does seem as if the author had been suddenly overtaken by events and the end is rather abrupt.
I read this thanks to NetGalley and it will be published on 21st April. Sadly for Nina Stibbe, I think I will always like Love, Nina better than any of her other books. Unfair, when it was her first but I love it.