This is essentially a diary written by the author whilst living in London for a year, on what she calls a sabbatical from her marriage, left behind in Cornwall. Will she return the reader wonders as the days and months pass by. When she wrote this, was she already intending it for publication I wonder. From trying to read between the lines, I think not but why indeed would any writer pass up the idea and the possibility of good sales.
Nina Stibbe became famous for a first book called ‘Love Nina’ which was a collection of letters written by Nina to her sister Victoria when she first left her Leicestershire village to become a nanny in London. They are naive, innocent and very funny. Since then there have been several novels and now this diary.
I assume the book title is referencing the Emily Dickinson poem: ‘Got up early, took the dog and visited the sea. The mermaids in the basement came out to look at me.’ I quite like a literary allusion here and there!
Nina Stibbe was on Private Passions recently, (the Radio 3 version of Desert Island Discs) and was quite particular in explaining the pronunciation of her surname. It’s root is Germanic, the ‘e’ is spoken and there is a suggestion of a ‘h’ before the ‘t’, thus Shtibbe. The number of times she must be correcting people.
And so to the diary itself. Some readers will laugh all the way through it whilst others I suspect will find it rather repetitive. As for me, well, yes I did enjoy it but I definitely won’t read it again and it doesn’t make me want to search out the ( very successful and multi awarded) novels. I did love ‘Love Nina’ though, with her arriving in a particular part of Primrose Hill in north London that happened to be the very road where Alan Bennett, Jonathan Miller and Claire Tomalin, amongst others, lived. They came for dinner frequently and were very interested in this girl ‘up from the country.’ Nina had no idea who these literary people were and therein lay the huge potential for comedic writing.
So there you have it, the diary of a sixty-year-old runaway who might just be becoming, in her words, ‘a proper adult’ at last. And yes, dear Reader, she does return to Cornwall and I like to think that one way or another she also returns to her marriage. I will probably never really know.