Sweet, much like I imagine Cold Comfort Farm might have been described by a younger child. Lizzie Vogel’s parents are divorced and her mother is trying to cope with the changed circumstances despite being the sort who stays in bed a lot and writes plays.
Meanwhile the kids range about in a crowd with a motley abundance of pets (I particularly liked Maxwell the pony) and write letters to various men trying to match up their mother. Cheerful disasters ensue and all is much fun despite the grimness of the situation.
Nina Stibbe is so very good at capturing the logic of children in this, the small hurts, the pride, the struggling to make things right, the coping of kids with no responsible adult to look after them. At one point Lizzie wakes up with a heaviness in her chest…and her mother describes it as “the pig” that comes sometimes and sits on you for a while but eventually goes away again and that’s a pretty clear and true description of how depression might feel to a kid.
Despite the challenges, the Vogel kids and mother keep on keeping on in true British spirit and by the end of the book I was quite in love with them all.
Funny but in a way that gives you more in emotional depth than it at first appears. Highly recommended. ( )

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 anchored in life that are so strong in her that you can't help but cheer her on.

Also, there is that one scene that catches you unaware while riding the bus to work on a Friday morning and you burst into tears. Brilliant.

( )

I was not particularly enjoying this book as I reached the middle. The humor was missing me. I felt sorry for the kids who had dirty hair and a divorced mother with a reputation. But the last bit got to me.

I also like that Lizzie tells us she's writing a separate book about the sneaky charismatic pony Maxwell.

The book evokes the desperate feeling of being an outsider and not having any friends. I'm surprised at how well it comes across because these characters are the least sentimental bunch I've ever run into. ( )

adult fiction/humor. This was sort of reminiscent of "my family and other animals" with its droll escapades recounted by a child, but with more adult situations and language. I did enjoy Nina Stibbe's narratives in her letters (see her previous memoir from her nanny days, especially as an audiobook) but this fictional account fared much better for its plot structure. ( )

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