Advice on use, and more

Friday I warned you that in the days ahead I would likely be quoting from Love, Nina, Nina Stibbe's wonderfully funny collection of letters she sent her sister from her London posting as a nanny to the children of London Review of Books editor Mary-Kay Wilmers . . . and now we are days ahead! So herewith are a few of the many, many passages that made me and rocketlass laugh out loud.

After a number of grumbled complaints from the children (and regular dinner guest Alan Bennett) about the turkey burgers Nina has been making ("Because MK keeps buying turkey mince and what the fuck else can I do with it?"), she mentions the problem to MK:

Me: Can you stop getting the turkey mince?

MK: What's wrong with it?

Me: I can't make anything nice with it.

MK: It's versatile--simply use it in place of beef.

Me: You've memorised the pack.

MK: Yes, giving advice on use.

To be wholly fair to MK, we ought to note that the turkey mince wasn't the sole problem with Nina's cooking as she describes it: she was at that unsatisfying stage of learning, familiar to all cooks, where, as she writes to her sister, a recipe with more than six ingredients is too complicated.

Then there's this exchange, in which Alan Bennett (AB) is allowed not one but two perfect punchlines:

Someone drew something on our wall with a penknife or stick. MK thought it was a heart. I went and looked and saw a penis (scratched into the brick).

Me: I think it's meant to be a man's penis.

MK: I thought it might be a heart.

Me: How?

MK: An upside-down one.

AB: Like mine.

(Will [the older boy] goes out to look.)

Me: People don't usually draw hearts on walls.

MK: I might.

Sam [the younger boy]: I'd never draw a heart or . . . the other thing.

Will: (returns) It's definitely a dick.

MK: It looks more like a heart.

AB: You'd think they'd label it.

(AB phones later to say he saw it on the way out. It's a penis.)

The following exchange comes a few months after Nina accidentally scraped the family car up a bit, then attempted to convince the boys not to tell MK. Which they ultimately couldn't resist doing. The letter opens, "Good news. Mary-Kay has pranged the car at long last--a relief after all mine (prangs)." Which leads to a dialogue:

Sam: It's mum's first time crashing.

Me: Yeah, but it's worse than any of mine--in terms of damage done.

MK: Hmm.

Me: Mine never required any action to be taken.

MK: Only the untangling of deception and denial.

Me: You dented the number plate--irreparably.

MK: True, but my credibility remains intact.


Told Misty that MK is unusual.

Me: She's just very unusual.

Misty: Is she a bit mad?

Me: God, no, she's 100 per cent sane.

Misty: That's unusual.

Me: That's what I mean.

Part of the fun of the book is that Nina is correct: Mary-Kay Wilmers comes across as remarkably sane, grounded, calm, sharp . . . and strange. Through dialogues like these we get enough of a sense of her slightly off-kilter character that when, later, she mentions that she likes it when people climb trees (prompted by Sam expressing his disapproval), it seems totally reasonable for Nina to suggest that the it makes sense because "it's one less person on the ground."

This is a great book, folks. Hie thee to your local bookstore and pre-order it--but do so knowing full well that you're going to laugh on the subway and read bit after bit aloud to your friends. Trust me: the risk of ostracization is worth it!

Thomas Hardy, "the man behind the pen"

Ever since I got back from London, I've been carefully rationing Nina Stibbe's always hilarious, sometimes poignant Love, Nina, a collection of the letters that the then-twenty-year-old Stibbe sent her sister in 1982 and '83 describing her experiences as the nanny for the two young children of London Review of Books publisher Mary-Kay Wilmers. The letters are full of absolutely hilarious dialogues among Stibbe, the boys, Wilmers, and their neighbor Alan Bennett, who's constantly dropping by for dinner (and usually supplying the mordant punchline to the group's exchanges). The dialogues are so good--so odd and funny and surprising--that I think I've read half the book out loud to rocketlass by now, to her great amusement.

The letters aren't solely of comedic interest, however. They also offer an interesting picture of early 1980s London as seen for the first time by a girl from Leicestershire, and of a moment in life that will be familiar to those of us who came from rural or lower-class backgrounds: when we begin to see higher culture, to know we want to be involved with it somehow, and yet we remain fundamentally (and often comically) ignorant of what that would entail. Stibbe's vacillation between confidence and fear, interest and frustration, knowledge and ignorance are charming and touching; they remind me a bit of similar moments in Caleb Crain's brilliant novel Necessary Errors, re-creating as his book did a very particular youthful feeling of inchoate ambition and hope.

I could spend the rest of this blog's year quoting from this book, but for today I'll just share an amusing--and far from unperceptive--observation that Stibbe made after encountering Thomas Hardy's poetry for the first time. She had been assigned some of his novels as part of her A-Level syllabus, and someone had suggested that she delve into the poetry as well in order to better understand "the man behind the pen." She subsequently wrote to her sister:

Got some of Hardy's poems out of Holborn library as per the letter. Most of them are rubbish and do not help me understand him. They make me think of him as wallowing and moaning and wishing for the olden days and that he hadn't been such a cunt to his wife.

Which I already knew from the introduction to The Return of the Native.

Later, she tells a university interviewer that Hardy makes her feel insignificant, which, given the high drama and fatalism of his fiction, seems like a not unreasonable response for a twenty-year-old.

I'm sure I'll share more from Love, Nina soon. Stateside readers, meanwhile, should go ahead and have their local bookstore pre-order a copy: it will be published over here by Little, Brown in April.