Having enjoyed Nina Stibbe’s previous books, all thought-provoking and composed in a unique literary voice, I was delighted to be granted a free ARC from the publishers and NetGalley of her latest release. Writing that this book details the friendship between two women called Susan and Norma does not make One Day I Shall Astonish the World sound terribly exciting, but the book is so much more. Documenting the joint working life, careful acquaintance and then decade-long friendship between two fictional but so familiar-sounding women that reaches into 2020, this book touches on many interpersonal topics with great sensitivity and authenticity. It is also suffused in Stibbe’s usual wonderful sense of humour, so is well worth a read! Thank you to the publishers and to NetGalley for the free ARC that allowed me to produce this honest and unbiased review.

The main character, Susan, works alongside her employer's daughter Norma in a dress shop. We follow the story arc as their relationship and careers develop, from colleagues, to best friends, then as the relationship sours, to colleagues again. The story is set over many years following the lives of the characters and ends more or less up to date during the pandemic. I love the writing of Nina Stibbe and enjoyed the book tremendously.

I loved this story with snapshots of Susan’s life from teenage to middle age, accompanied throughout by her husband Roy and intermittently by her friend Norma. Small details of everyday events reveal huge life events, and Susan’s ability to keep going. This is a novel in which comic phrasing hides Susan’s envy and disappointment in not achieving her academic potential or being validated for her contributions to the lives of others and the university she works in. At times a study of friendship, of marriage, at others a campus novel it is a joy. I felt seen when Susan’s conversation style was described as ‘personal anecdote and rambling digression’ and am still laughing about the headtorch. Thank you Nina!

Comic writing is notoriously difficult to pull off but Nina Stibbe has proved herself a master of the genre with her non fiction bestsellers, and now brings those skills to the world of the novel. One Day I Shall Astonish the World has the pithy sentences and fine observational moments we have come to expect from this author, coupled with a story about a woman in middle age examining her relationships and wondering about the path she herself has taken. Although I prefer her non fiction, this is an engaging, extremely well written novel.

The way that Nina Stibbe wrote this book was wonderful. I greatly enjoyed the actual writing, and found the book to be funnier than I originally expected.

Unfortunately, as far as stories go, I found this one to be quite bland. It is, indeed, about the protagonists unlikely friendship with the daughter of her employer, and how their friendship grows and changes.

But I found it to be a story not worth reading. I got half-way through before I realised that I didn't care for any of the characters in anyway shape or form, and certainly not enough to trudge through the rest of the book.

Many thanks to Netgalley and Penguin UK for providing me with an ARC

Nina Stibbe's latest novel focuses on Susan, Norma and their weird and wonderful friends and relations. The long-lasting, not always easy friendship between the two women gets put under Stibbe's comic microscope and I adored Susan's interactions with Canadian Margaret A; knitting VIP Sandi T, and her laugh-out-loud description of Baroness Trumpington (what a shame she isn't around to read it). Fiction writers have been debating whether or how to mention lockdowns/Covid in upcoming work; Stibbe handles its inclusion with sensitivity, and readers are left rooting for Susan at the novel's end.

I am so glad I’ve discovered this author. Having never read any of her books before, I am now ready to devour them all. Loved this book. It was like walking along in life with your comfortable friends, discussing life, the universe and everything, and not having to pretend to be something you’re not. The characters were very real and relatable, some very funny moments in the book, I laughed out loud quite often. I highly recommend this book if you want an amusing, easy to read book that you never want to end.

It's only the sixteenth of January and this has already secured itself a spot in my top ten reads of the year.

I am unashamedly an uber fan of Nina Stibbe's work. I approach each new novel with slight trepidation, wondering if she can live up to the joy the previous book gave me. The answer, with every book is YES, a thousand times, yes.

This is glorious.

Susan is the narrator. The book opens as she is navigating the tricky waters of life as the assistant to the Vice Chancellor of Rutland University during COVID. Her job established we then find out that Susan's relationship with her husband Roy is less than perfect. She hates that he won't eat vegetables and that he puts his fingers in his ears when she talks.

At this point we hop back to Susan's teenage years and her first meeting with Roy and we have a straightforward chronology back to where we began.

What is so marvellous about Stibbe as a writer is that she is so acutely observant of every day life. And she is brilliant at pinning it down and in a few, deft sentences, showing you the absurdities and the horrors of ordinary life.

There are brilliant people in this book, high fliers like Norma Pack-Allan, Susan's best friend, a high flying academic who is always jetting off around the globe and winning prizes for poetry and such like, but these are not the people who make this book such a joy.

It is the haberdashers and caterers, the grounds managers and teenagers, the people who run pet shops and the policemen who make this book soar.

And it is Stibbe, through Susan who shows us their glorious, hilarious, bleak imperfections.

Susan is such a cypher in this book. She is the one who coaches Norma from being a woman who doesn't know how to sew bust darts properly (she never learns) with a dead end Phd in sand to a glitteringly knowledgeable heroine of modern day literature, but she plods along in her estate house, with her domestic concerns jostling cheek by jowl with her fierce intellect, keeping herself small, biding her time. And like Susan, it is in the throwaway lines that Stibbe litters the book that we see the real lives of the people who we would otherwise dismiss as dull or ordinary. You leave the book knowing that you have only touched the surface of things and dying to know everyone's back story. It really seems true here that there is a novel in everyone and I would like very much for Stibbe to write them all.

I properly hooted with laughter reading this book and there are times when a single line gave me such a catch in my throat I thought I would cry. It's perfection.

I don't have enough words to praise this book. Imagine the very best of Victoria Wood, Alan Bennett and Sue Townsend and you're not even close to how great a novelist Stibbe is.

What a stunning book! I loved the writing and there were so many moments where it broke my heart. I can't wait to read more by this author.

A delightful bildungsroman that shows the best of Nina Stibbe's writing. Really engaging and enjoyable story.

I really loved Nina Stibbe's first book which was a selection of letters she'd written to her family while working in London but the fiction I've read of hers, while quirky and sometimes amusing, doesn't live up to that early promise. There is much to like in this story about Susan, a woman who drops out of university to have a baby and her subsequent life. It is a tale of a relationship between her and her best friend Norma. Susan is on the whole an appealing character, Norma is not and lets Susan down on several occasions. Some of the observations made about this relationship (and about that between her and her husband) are very good but there is something lacking. There is no narrative arc, no storyline to follow. It wanders on with lots of description and very little happening except for a flurry of activity at the end. I didn't dislike it, I just didn't quite 'get' it and I certainly didn't love it. Thanks to NetGalley and Penguin for the ARC.

One Day I Shall Astonish the World by Nina Stibbe is humorous, heart-breaking and will not disappoint anyone who, like me, has enjoyed her previous books.

I laughed out loud three times just reading the epilogue, which was an insight into the life of a middle aged woman working at a University who happens to be burdened with a husband who wishes to live forever, and a daughter who wants to blame her for everything.

The first half of the book changes pace a little, taking us back to the youth of the protagonist, and to her getting to know her husband and best friend.

The second half sees us back in the present, leading up to the covid 19 outbreak.
It's a little like a Kitty monologue from Victoria Wood in some ways. Quite breathless and not very sedately paced, but funny and certainly a book that would keep a person occupied.
As well as the humour, it's about someone wanting to be seen - wanting recognition.
And perhaps, finally getting it.

Great read from an amazing author.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for the chance to read a digital arc in exchange for my feedback.

I enjoyed this book although not as much as some of her others. Was a light read but some interesting characters. I did think that Sue had made some poor choices in life!

One Day I shall Astonish the World is an uplifting and funny novel taking its readers through a marriage and friendships punctuated by human tragedies as well as life’s comedy. I loved it. It is in part a campus novel that reaches into family life, friendships as well as standing as a university story during a time of change. Susan and her family live in a liminal space between Academia and the wider business world. We are given a fascinating glimpse into both. Set mostly on Rutland’s campus it begins on the cusp of the nineteen nineties and ends in 2020 as a pandemic is poised to change university life. This sharp entertaining novel contains a vivid gallery of characters, personalities I enjoyed meeting and missed asfter I turned the novel’s last pages. Roy, Susan and Norma are outstanding creations but Honey , Susan and Roy’s daughter as well as Vice chancellor Willoughby, Susan’s boss are also unique realisations. The interaction between characters is realistic and brilliantly stage- crafted revealing shocks with a deep sense of humanity as hopeful and significant as the University’s motto ‘ one Day I shall Astonish the World. ‘ This is a beautifully crafted and a perceptive novel very relevant to the particular times in which we live. It is a wonderful and hopeful story.

Both Susan and Norma are such intriguing characters, and I loved reading about the dynamics of their dysfunctional friendship and how this evolved over the decades. I loved the author’s sharp wit and think she nails the delicate balance of humour and heartbreak which makes for a well-rounded story. It came as a surprise to read about the pandemic towards the end of the novel and while I thought I wouldn’t enjoy this, I found it was so seamlessly woven into the narrative that it just added a further level of authenticity and relatability. Overall a funny, charming, enjoyable read.

This is a book about a woman, Susan, who works with, and ends up best friends with her employer's daughter Norma.
We are privy to the way their relationship develops, from one of colleagues, to best friends, then colleagues again, with less friendship.
The book is set over several decades, and details the changes in their lives, as their own relationship morphs, ending with the horror of COVID-19.
I want to have liked this more, but unfortunately for me, it was a hard read. I was unable to really get into the swing of the book, and found there was not a proper story arc to it, a definite beginning. middle or end...

Many thanks to NetGalley and Penguin UK for an ARC n exchange for an honest review.

I have really enjoyed Nina Stibbe’s previous books and was delighted to receive a copy of this most recent one. This charts the unlikely friendship between two women throughout their early twenties, marriages and careers. It’s full of Nina’s sharp wit and her deadly accurate recollections of the events, personalities, products and fashions of the late 20th and early 21st century.

Without giving any spoilers, this is the first novel I’ve read which is at least partially set at the start of the Coronavirus pandemic and the author gives a balanced and believable account of her characters in that time.

This is probably less light hearted than her previous works but still as good nonetheless

Well this wasn't exactly a shark-jumping exercise, but it was neither a step in the right direction for this fine comedic author nor a continuation of what's gone before. It's not cheapness nor the Leicester connection that has linked Ms Stibbe with the spirit of Sue Townsend, for there clearly has been a kindred spirit, creating social comedies out of the English Midlands and being hugely successful with it. Here, though, the author seems intent on recreating something a bit more, well, Alan Bennett. Leicester takes a back-seat as a lot of the story is set next door, in and around a town housing a fictional University of Rutland, and whatever real-life moments have inspired this story, there are sections here that want to cram in as many social tics, product references and remembrances as possible. And all to nothing like the comedic effect of before.

The story is also a slightly woolly one, with the narrator discussing both her sort-of best friend and her husband, and how over the decades the two never really gelled, and how she seems slightly besotted with, smitten by and perhaps lusting for her boss at the Uni. (Although to reference a further Leicester author, this is nothing like the Malcolm Bradbury and David Lodge-era campus comedies.) Groan at the references to home-made dresses of the vintage as her Saturday job in a fabric store becomes more important than intended; witness how easy it is for a man to progress through the ranks at the gold club he works at, compared to a woman getting anything like the career and life she wants; read with wonderment at dogging coming to Rutland. Yes, there are some very unusual decisions made by our author here, and I longed for the disguised autobiographies of old. The children might be Stibbe's own here, albeit one is of the wrong gender, but there was a definite lack of the spark seen beforehand in the deep dive into her life and times. When we do find why the book has the title it has, we can only respond to it, in the case of this volume, in the negative. Unlike her other books, this was most unextraordinary, and when it is kind of forced to catch up with modern times at the close (again, to little effect), we are aware again that in her prime Townsend would have nailed the whole topic and diary format with so much more purpose, oomph and brevity.

Barely ever better than a disappointment.