Man at the Helm, (Paperback)

from stephengoldenberg

A rather strange throwback of a novel. A cross between I Captured the Castle and Just William stories with a dash of P.G.Wodehouse thrown in. It's set in the early 1970s but could just as easily be the 1920s or 30s with its family living on inherited family business income and employing housekeep...

from Deelightful

Read it for a book club. I think everyone else raved about it. I didn't find it so special.

from beentsy

I really loved this book. 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. Lizzie, this narrator, does not come across that way. There is a reality and a feeling of being anchore...

from triscuit

Loved it. Set in 70's England, with a posh mom and kids sent off to the country after a marriage fail. Money is shorter than they are used to, the villagers don't approve (and the women were right to worry about their husbands) and the kids try to find a new man to make things right. Perfectly to...

from stringcat3

Man At The Helm by Nina Stibbe has been described as a modern I Capture The Castle. Not exactly. More like an English The Parent Trap. Amusing for a bit, but then way too repetitious. Skimmed after about 50 pages. Would have been better as a short story, a novella at best. Just not enough meat there