Stibbe extracts humour from miserable chaos

The Book Cover

Man at the Helm

By Nina Stibbe Penguin, €17

In Man at the Helm, Nina Stibbe’s fictional debut, she turns her eye to the nannied: a young girl and her siblings adrift in the wake of their parents’ divorce when their father leaves their mother for another man.

Loosely based on Stibbe’s own childhood, Man at the Helm returns the reader to the periphery of privilege. Narrated by nine-year-old Lizzie, it charts ...