Sara & Cariad's Weirdos Book Club - Love, Nina by Nina Stibbe with Rachel Parris

Episode Date: October 19, 2023

This week's book guest is Love, Nina by Nina Stibbe with Rachel Parris.Sara and Cariad are joined by comedian, writer, improvisor and fellow Austentatious member Rachel Parris to discuss Camden, the London Review of Books, Alan Bennett and more! Thank you for reading with us. We like reading with you! Love, Nina by Nina Stibbe is available to buy here or on Apple Books here.Sara’s debut novel Weirdo is published by Faber & Faber and is available to buy here.Cariad’s book You Are Not Alone is published by Bloomsbury and is available to buy here.Follow Rachel on Instagram @rachelsvparris and Twitter @rachelparrisYou can book tickets to see Rachel's show Fool's Gold hereFollow Sara & Cariad’s Weirdos Book Club on Instagram @saraandcariadsweirdosbookclub and Twitter @weirdosbookclub Recorded by ben Williams and edited by Naomi Parnell for Plosive.Artwork by Welcome Studio.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I'm Sarah Pasco. Hello, I'm Carriad Lloyd. And we're weird about books. We love to read. We read too much. We talk too much. About the too much that we've read. Which is why we've created the Weirdo's Book Club.

Join us. A space for the lonely outsider to feel accepted and appreciated. A place for the person who'd love to be in a real book club, but it doesn't like wine or nibbles. Or being around other people. Is that you? Join us. Check out our Instagram at Sarah and Carriads Weirdos Book Club for the upcoming books we're going to be discussing. You can read along and share your opinions.

Or just skulk around in your raincoat like the weirdo you are. Thank you for reading with us. We like reading with you. This week's book guest is Love Nina by Nina Stibby. What's it about? Love Nina is a series of letters. Nina Stibby wrote to her sister Vic whilst working as a nanny for two boys in London.

What qualifies it for the Weirdo's Book Club? Well, Nina is very much an outsider in the North London world and she's often shoeless. In this episode we discuss Thomas Hardy. Actors. Family. Alan Bennett. Cooking.

Camden. The London Review of Books. And Horses. And joining us this week is Rachel Paris. Rachel is an award-winning comedian, writer and improviser. As well as being a member of Ostentatious, the improvised Jane Austen novel. I've heard they're very good. She's also the host of The Match Report.

It's a regular guest on I'm sorry I haven't a clue on Radio 4 and has been seen on Live of the Apollo, would I lie to you, QI and mock the week. Trigger warning. This episode is very middle class. Hello. Hello. Thank you so much for joining us. is Rachel Paris.

I'm very happy to be here. We could just chat, couldn't we? I know. We're having to force ourselves to actually do the thing that we're supposed to do. This is a very chatty book. It is a very chatty book. There are some books where I think,

oh, if we went off on a tangent, and then we must go back to the original text. Yes. But with this one, I think it's all right. Yeah, that's true. I think it's okay to be chatty. In a way, it's about tangents. Yes.

It's her going off on tangents. Yes. Yeah. So we are talking about Love Nina by Nina Stibby, which was written in 1982. Great year, everybody. Great year. Carrie Ed was born,

Not the time. I'm at 25, obviously. Because some of us are still like that. I think that's when John Lennon was killed. So maybe a really tough year actually for music and stuff. In the books, in history books, it's always when the Falklands happened. So that's when you have, what happened to you were born, Falklands? Why, you guys have good knowledge of 1982.

What happened in you? You were born, you were 84, yeah. Anything for 84? Kylie Minow. No, no, I just share her birthday. She wasn't born in 1984, but she looks like she was. So you're a Gemini as well? Yes, oh, I was going to say that as I was thinking that,

and I thought, does Sarah know she's a Gemini? We had in some Gemini chat, the other, on Monica Heise's episode. Monica Heise describes Gemini's in her book as the psychopaths of the zodiac. Wow. Yeah. Wow, Monica. Did you not know? Did you not know? Did you not know? Did you not know?

I have seen quite a lot of negative stuff about Gemini's to be fair. Yeah, well, I've blanked it out. Which is such a Gemini trait. I don't know if NeNe Stibby is a Gemini, actually. That wasn't clear. When we mentioned in our very first episode, or maybe no it was pumpkin eater we talked about the star sign

I had a couple of people say to me yeah we do want to know the star signs of all the authors okay I will look it up in a minute so this is an unusual pick for a book because it's not a novel Carrie had picked it all right

Mrs literature doesn't want to make sure you're not tarred with the brush it's not about a tarred with brush I just wanted people to know just wanted people to know like I want them to know you're a Gemini you really like this book I do like this book

Yeah. When did you first find it? When did it come to you in your life? Somebody recommended her fiction to me as being very funny. And I think it was on a late-night Kindle browse. And then when I saw this one, this is the first books that was published, which is a series of letters, real letters that she wrote to her sister. So I was like, oh, I'll just start there. And I just fell in love with the writing and how funny it was and the world. It is, as we said, real letters to her sister talking about living in this mad North London, which is where I grew up, literary madness, really. Like Alan Bennett is their neighbour, comes around all the time. Jonathan Miller lives down, round the corner.

Yeah, I don't know Jonathan Miller. Well, you're in Nina Stibby's Club, because neither does she. And she's this 20-year-old who turns up from Leicester and it's just dropped into the middle of like basically sort of the lit... I guess like joining the Bloomsby Group at the time when everyone's hanging out. It's like everybody who's everybody is hanging out at that point. But she doesn't know who anyone is,

and she writes very funny, confused, naive letters back to her sister. And it just made me laugh out loud. I'm getting the feeling it didn't make you laugh out loud, Sarah Pascoe. That's what I'm getting the feeling. It made me laugh out loud. Thank you, Rachel Parrott. It was so funny. Her little conversations, they must be what actually happened.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Or they're not quite what actually happened, but she's just done a fantastic job of doing a slightly funnier version of what happened. But they're so funny. I did wonder if it's the, I kept thinking, this is the kind of thing that would have got a big laugh around the dinner table. And then she goes, okay, that's it. Yeah. And verbatim popped it in a letter to her sister, the bit that gets a big laugh.

Especially when she's been very funny in real life. Yeah. But it's not always, it's everyone's funny. She makes everyone quite funny. It's the funny little things that you say. I wrote down all my favourite funny bits. There was a conversation between, so she looks after two young boys. Sam and Will.

Sam and Will. she's like a nanny to them, isn't she? And the things that they come out with their, like, view on life often, the way that she captures it in her letters is so funny. I remember a bit where he's trying to calculate using one of those old-fashioned things we used to do in the 80s, how long it will be until she has children. And he goes, I've done the math, it's going to be three years.

And she goes, that's far too soon, no. And he goes, five years then. And she goes, no. And he goes, fine, seven years, but it's twins. They are so funny And she captures for letters Which are just letters to your sister Which you'd expect to be dull

You know Or not very fascinating to the world She captures that world that she's in And we should say she's looking after Sam and Will Salmon Will's mum is Mary Kay Wilmers Who created the London Review of Books And Sammon Will's dad is the director Stephen Frist But the letters don't go into that

No they don't But again I guess explains why everyone is very funny And interesting literary Like the people she is around at that time are certainly not like, oh, he's an accountant and she's a GP. It's like they are very literary, funny people. That's true, yeah. Mary Kay Wilmers was best friends with Alan Bennett from university, so that's why he...

Oh, really? Yes. That's why Oxford... Because it just felt like, so this is not a world I know. Yep. I didn't grow up in North London. I mean, I should say I didn't grow up in literary North London. I grew up very much in suburban North London with normal people.

But so I didn't know who these people were and had to Google them after. I didn't know who the mum was. Yeah, I had to people, everybody, apart from Alan Bennett, basically. But so the character of Alan Bennett, I just felt like this is guy down the road. He's quite, because obviously Alan Bennett in my head is an old man, but at the time he was probably younger. But I think he's always been that age. He's always been an old man, yeah. And so it feels a bit like just sort of meals on wheels, or he's allowed to pop in and have some supper, which he's always complaining about.

Yeah. But he's allowed to come in and eat. Yeah, but I think that's what I love about this book. she captures the way that people are in your life who moan about things like family, extended family or chosen family, and that Alan lives two doors down, but he's better all the time moaning about it. And then there's a point in the book where Nina moves out, and she is then constantly trying to come around to number 55 as well to hang out with them. And you just get the sense that this is a very lovely family to be with. Like she describes just all watching,

like the boys love watching football. And even though she doesn't like football and the mum doesn't like football and Alan Bennett doesn't like football. They all watch football and shout at the screen together and you just get this sense of like people who like being near each other. Yeah. And I think, yeah, I didn't know who Mary Kay Wilmers was. I had to Google that afterwards and discovered that she is from an incredibly mad, rich, wealthy background, created the London Review of Books, which is, if you don't know,

a hugely influential literature, literary newspaper. Your husband loves the London Review of Books. It is the only thing he reads. Yeah. genuinely is the only person I've ever seen reading it I have to say well he's such an intellectual he's intellectual Ben would fit into this family really well wouldn't he

well he'd probably he's as a quietly spoken neighbour yeah quietly spoken neighbour he would like that I think yeah my husband does love London reviews I didn't know what that was the LRB until I met Ben I had no idea what it was but it has like the highest circulation for any literature magazine and it's oddly influential it's where Hilary Mantel wrote their essay about Kate Middleton. Yeah.

So it publishes things that often controversial and wouldn't be published anywhere else. Mary Kay Wilmers has basically bankrolled it for many years. And she's only just stopped, isn't she? She's still consultant editor, yeah,

but she has now stepped down because of her, I think she's reached retirement age, but she's still very much involved. And she created it with Jonathan Miller. Oh! But then they had a fallout and she took over. So who is Jonathan Bloody Miller?

Dr. Miller's just like, oh, writer, playwright, but was a doctor. I don't want to say too much because I think I'm not entirely 100% of his career, but he's very much of that, like, John Cleese used to do comedy, but then end up writing. Very famous English writer. Did he write operas? He moved on to operas, yeah.

Yeah. But he started in doing like sketch comedy with Alan Bennett and John Cleese back in like that week of the week of the world. It's amazing that comedy can just go, you can just become whatever you want. You have just released a novel. Exactly. Comedians, there's just no stop in us. He's a very intellectual, funny. interesting person who has written lots of things and then now I think writes opera.

But this book is not about him. No, it's not about it. He's fairly in it. It's Nina's take on this world. So she doesn't know any of these people, to be fair. And the book came about because for Mary Kay Wilmer's 70th birthday, Andrew Hagan, who's a novelist and also writes Philadelphia, decided to collect all these tributes for her and do them at this big birthday party. And Nina said, oh, my sister found these funny letters. And they read two of the letters out of the party and it went down so well. Someone was like, there's a book in that. And Mary Kay Wilmers originally was like,

absolutely no way are you publishing this. And Sam and Will said, no, you've got to publish it. It's really funny. Well, it's interesting. It can they make a TV show of these letters. With Helena, Susan Bonc Carter, HSBC. And Sam, the son, was in it as a neighbour.

I didn't know that. Oh, that's good. Yeah. If you go on his Wikipedia, this is his credit. Yeah. Helena Bonn Carter played Mary Kay Wilmers. Yeah. But it's an amazing time.

that it captures. And I feel like... But I don't think it captures the time. Oh, okay. Interesting. Come on. Okay. I think it captures, like you say, like idiosyncratic, a little, very privileged, very posh. Yeah.

There's nothing sad in this book. What? I mean, this is the cheerful moments. I think Nina, I think you definitely get the sense she's taken out and is sad. I mean, Sam is born with this neurological disorder. Exactly. And that is obviously, he's taken to hospital quite a lot. I think she glosses over.

any sadness and the letters are definitely like there's a quote on the front the true air to Sue Townsend by Catmaran and I do think it's very much of the Sue Townsend funny domestic life novel I'm interested whether I think it's really interesting trying to get to know her personality

and whether it's truly reflected in these letters because you see a lot of shades of her character and then there's the odd there's a bit that I highlighted because I thought it was so Lester it hurt Oh yes I wanted this is why I chose this book because Rachel is from Lester I'm from Lester and I moved to London.

Yes. And I also love that she moved from Lester to London. And her first glimpse, I totally agree with you, of London, was this ridiculous, like, literati, very fancy, rich environment. And she must have been like, this is what London's like. And it's so not reflective of normal life. But, yeah, I liked this bit. So, yes, we mentioned that Sam has various disabilities.

He's born with Riley Day syndrome. Right, yes. But it's sort of not specified in the letters, is it? No, no. She doesn't quite know. So she says, Dear Vic, that's her sister who she writes to you. I don't worry about Sam much, mainly because Mary Kay does the worrying and keeps it to herself. It's no good to people worrying about the same thing unless they want to go on and on about it, and we don't.

Yeah, I know. And that reminds me so much of, like, my upbringing and like that cut these Midlands, I know it's not exclusive to the Midlands, but this Midlands mentality of like, there's no point harping on about things. Just kind of get on with life and life's hard and you've just got to get on with it. And I wonder if that's why there's not too much sadness in there. It's just her personality maybe. It's just like, yeah, you know, there's bad stuff, but we'll just keep going. There's that amazing bit as well when she talks about the new nanny he replaces her, who she thinks is too nice and is annoying MK.

And she says to her sister, oh, you know, I asked MK once how her weekend was. And she gave me a look and I realised, well, don't ask that again. But again, very matter of fact, not offended, not bothered. You know, I think it definitely is talking about an extremely tiny pocket of London in the 80s who are obviously, you know, not particularly affected by what was happening in the government that time or the minor strikes, but they are, obviously, there's lots of writing going on about that. And I think that's what I, to me, is a comfort read. It's a very lovely, warm place to be that's very funny and very lovely. And the idea, just sort of sinking in, I love

reading letters. I love reading other people's letters. I feel just like the nosiness. I read the entire letter collection of the Mitford sisters, which is huge. But just being able to see how people express themselves so freely and that you get the sense of Vic, there's these amazing moments in the book where she won't reference what Vic has said, but she's like, oh, disagree with you about P, make sure you get a different car. When she sends her her essay and goes, sorry you didn't like my story. The autobiographical essay, because we should say it's almost educating Rita.

She moves in with these people. She's dropped out of school. She has no qualifications at all. She's been working at a dentist before she's a nanny for them. She has absolutely no qualifications to be a nanny either. And then while she starts living with them, they convince her to go back and go to university and she goes to Thames Polytechnic.

There's a beautiful bit where she says, when she's like got her bag on, she's ready for college. And she says, I caught a glimpse of myself in the window. And I felt, and I think she sort of, because I listened to the audio book as well.

She goes, I read by her. Oh, nice. And she says, I felt thrilled. And she doesn't, because she's quite kind of, what's the fret? She's quite even in her spirit, isn't she, all through? And to have these moments of little highs,

like you say, there's not loads of, like, really, really high and really, really low. Yeah. To have a little moment of like, yes, she's thrilled, like of her, like empowering herself. That sounds so patronising. But yeah, I think, and it is a privileged story, but also she's not from privilege at all.

No. At all. Her, and if you read her fiction after this, which I've read all three books, kind of autobiographical memoir, but fictionalised, her childhood was really tough, really, really tough Lester working clock, like. And so I found that interesting to read them and then looking back on this and being like,

she dropped into an absolutely alien world. But also, I guess I'm in defence of privilege, like those people are real, they do exist. And this is, it did happen to her, even though there's other 80s stories that would be more reflective of working class voices. Rachel, what was it like for you when you moved to London from Leicester? Not quite the same. I moved in my early 20s to a tower block in Ealing. Yeah. And yeah, it was...

Was this to study? No, to get a job to work, yeah. So I'd kind of had my post-uny years of doing a bit of work and doing a bit of acting and stuff like that. But just I knew... I've been meaning to move to London since after uni and just been putting it off. I knew that if I wanted to get into performing, really,

I needed to move to London. But I also knew I had no money, so I moved to London. It was when you think back of what you do in your life, it was absolutely insane. But I had £300 in my bank account. And that was enough for the first month's rent. I found some old friends to live with who had one place going in Ealing. I knew nothing about where Ealing would be in relation to anything else. I didn't yet have a job, so I knew I had one month to get a job to pay the next month's rent.

Oh, my Lord. And a job that needs to pay you. A job that needs to pay enough. Yeah. So I did. I got, first of all, a hotchpatch of jobs, a little job in Stevenage, actually, on a weekend doing stage coach drama teaching.

Oh, right, yeah. So I had to get up at like five in the morning. I'm eating to stealing to Stephenage. And got other little bits and bought. Oh, I did like Perry piano teaching and everything. And then I got an unpaid internship initially. But then they did turn it into a junior role admin assistant. So yeah, I just did what you have to do to live in London,

just get several jobs to pay the rent. And then once I was earning enough, I could start doing a bit of music and comedy on the side. And then, yeah, years went by. And then I became a comedian. When I met you, you were living in a very nice house in Stockwell. It was very old. Old, yeah, it was characterful.

It was characterful with no wash machine. And you lived without washing machine for so many years. Eight years. I couldn't believe How can anyone cope? There's a book in that I want to hear the day to day of a woman who's got to wash her pants in the sink

She would not be bothered And then eventually you were like Even now you're like I sometimes forget about the washing machine Does that having washing machine feel like a massive luxury? Yeah it's sort of on the one hand It does having a washing machine And now, excuse me, a dishwasher

Oh ho! Ben didn't want a dishwasher He was anti because he didn't go up with one He was like, what's the point? And I put my foot down And then he's like king of it. He loves it so much. And he loads it correctly and tells me off and he like looks after it. And it's like his third child.

Because it is so good. He sounds like a brilliant butler. With the London Review of Books tucked into his jacket. Why do you think I married him? Yeah, you got it. Yeah. I really, I still can't quite get into the rhythm of having a washing machine in that I still have the habits. So what did you do before?

Saved it up until you've got a big pile of washing for probably too long. a month and then take it to the laundret where they have like massive king size. Yeah, really good machines. But she also used to be so frugal and be like, oh, I've just washed my top because I wanted to wait in the sink. Yeah. So she just washed one thing she needed. Yeah.

I'm lucky and not sweaty, Rachel. Yeah. Yeah, I think I do get away. Sometimes I don't get away with it, but I do get away with, yeah, my husband is like, you should do laundry more. I'm quite skeptical about laundry. But the dishwasher, I'm like, I refuse to wash anything up that could conceivably go in a dishwasher.

You put everything. Drives me mad when he's washing things. Why are you washing up a knife? But isn't there again a similar thing where you have to wait for it to be pretty much full before you put it on? Or would you just put it on for like a meal? You do sort of have to wait for it to be pretty full. But with kids, it just is full. And you can put bottles in there.

Yeah. Like not having to clean the bottles and have them all everywhere like drying and then worrying about which ones have got like, oh no, that one's now falling over and it's now not clean. And I feel like we're on a tangent. It's sort of the minutiae of daily life. And I love that this writer. has decided to just highlight things which most of us have in a day with our friends and people we love and don't consider important. Like don't go, oh, let's record that.

Like, there's one of my favourite bits where she's talking about that Sainsbury's is so cold, and that's why women are grumpy. Because they have to go into Sainsbills all the time and do yoga, and she thinks actually if women didn't have to do that, life would be easier. Yeah, she's like that way women are always putting cardigans on. Yeah, yeah, the cardigans thing. Or, like, she's got all these sort of mad friends as well. And her friend Pippa giving her this long, detailed lecturer,

about her Spaniel and how he's a King Charles. And like, I, it's very similar to Alan Bennett's writing. Or Victoria Wood is what it reminds me of as well. Like, it's really domestic. It's really about the phrasings that people use that in a day, we all hear those funny conversations and we don't think much about them. But for someone else to be able to have the skill to be able to grab that conversation and put it down and be like, that's what real life sounds like.

You get such a sense of their house. That's what became interesting when she started to write autobiographically. she was studying because it's the first time she ever gets an A and it might be the only A she ever gets at university and that's what you're seeing in the letters is that she was practising that all along without realising. We mentioned before that Sarah and I went to University of Sussex. There was her boyfriend, well her sort of on-off boyfriend who she then laid into her, we find out, marries. In the afterward, in the after they then go married and have children. Nanny goes to University of Sussex and that made me laugh out loud. One that

she's describing Sussex. It's full of students, but they seem a different type to the Thames type, more studious and longer hair. And then she said, she wheeze in the sink and feels bad about it. Went for a walk. Strange being with him. Strange being with him there. Strange going away again.

Got the feeling it was all over. Brighton seemed pleased with itself again. Just like, yes, it's just how you would, I feel like how we both talk to each other. And being able to like distill, I guess, is what I said. But I know what you mean. There's not, there's not like a great subtext to it, although I think it's a very poignant book because it's, for me, it's about, you know, being 20, not being naive, not understanding what's happening, falling into this absolutely amazing situation where you basically fall in love.

She's, she's still friends with those boys. She's still, you know, part of that family. And then having to realize that, oh, I have to leave here. Like, to be, to grow, I'm going to have to leave this place. I was sad we didn't get an ending. I think it's really poignant. And the second half of the book is called Moving On. And for me, what it smacks of, like, I don't know if you've had this in your life where something magically happens

where you're just like, oh, this is really cool, actually. Like, this is a really good situation. I mean, I can think of two involving both of you, which will make me sound so soppy. But like, I'll go with you, Rachel, because I'm scared to be soppy with Sarah. But like, ostentatious. Yeah. Like when we first started it and it was the six of us and we were like,

oh, I don't really know what this is. And then we started doing those shows. and that first Edinburgh, we were like, oh my God, this is like really fun. And people are, people want to see it. People want to see it. And we're having the time of our lives. And as soon as you become aware of that, you know it will end. And it will never be that moment again of like six people at a free fined venue.

Just like mucking around, not really knowing what they're doing. And then where we are now, which is like brilliant, but like an original member has left. And we have different people. And a lot of our conversations are about producing and admin and who's going to sort out the Edinburgh accommodation. It's business. It's business. And that's what this book reminds me of that moment where you find something you didn't realize was life-changing.

And you're like, oh, this is now, these are my family. Yeah. And oh, and I have to leave them. Like, that's what I feel this book is about. I wonder if you're projecting that on there. You do say I project quite a lot. Because I didn't get that bit of it. But when she talks about moving on and having to move out

and moving around the corner and then missing them. But she moves back. Yeah, but did you not feel that sense of, I mean, you can say projecting, but that's what books do, right? Of course, of course. It wasn't saying that you were wrong. It was more saying that's not something I picked up on. The really wonderful thing, the nourishing thing of this book was her finding literature. Yes.

Her reviews of Hardy and Shakespeare and Virginia Woolf and Chaucer. And all of that was so funny and it coming right, you know, halfway through from a position of sort of ignorance being told to read these things by both Mary Kay and Nanny. and then her studying for herself and finding things she genuinely was passionate about, falling in love with poetry. I know. And again, she sort of glosses over it a little bit. But reading between the lines of that in terms of like someone who, you know, that's why we love reading. Yeah, yeah. And enrich your life no matter where you're from, no matter how stupid you've been told you are,

no matter how much originally it seems like that was written in the olden days. The whole thing about how, oh yeah, they keep going on and on about how rude tracer is just because someone does a fart. Or what is Mary Kaye say to her? you don't have to like it, you just have to get it about yours. It's like, yeah, that's it. You just don't understand what they're saying. And having to decide who to do her dissertation on. Yes.

And whether it's someone that she, you know, is it, she's choosing between. J.M. Singh and Carson McCullors. Yeah. And she's completely wrong. Yeah. She's like, I was saying that Carson was like a recluse. Yeah. And no one liked her. And no one liked her.

And she's got bad reviews. She says, she's so funny. She says, I've now read a book that may as well have been called. Carson was incredibly popular. really fun life. I think if you don't think too deeply about what she's talking about, like it is just domestic letters and it's just delightful to spend time with her, is how I felt.

I thought that, because I had to sort of get over the fact. So I love a story. My favourite books to read are story. They're like epic or fantasy or murder mystery, like story, story, story, story, story. And that's so what I'm used to reading. I rarely read factual and I rarely read books like this. And so I had to sort of twist a find a way of accommodating that in my brain.

My way of accommodating it was instead of thinking it, thinking of it as a story, thinking of it is like a really beautiful picture on the wall. Yeah, yeah. With different scenes in and you can come back to it and you see something new in the painting every time you look at it. And the more you look at it, the more you can find. And actually, it is something I could keep coming back to, both the audiobook and the physical book, because there's so many little pictures and scenes

within it that are really beautiful that I did, yeah, I did, I liked it more. once I kind of reconfigure my brain a bit. That's interesting, isn't it? Because I love reading letters. I had to really adjust to this, but very similar to you. That's funny, yeah. I feel like with letters, the reason I love them so much, it's like eavesdropping,

because you're just like, oh, and then what did Adam Bend say? And then what happened there? And it's like, God, it feels like I got to be here and I got to understand it. But, yeah, so I have read letter books before, and I do really enjoy them. One aspect of the picture, if you like, that you could look at is her friendship with Nunny,

who we now know she goes on to marry. Yeah, she's obviously, drawn to and interested in but there's never a moment in her letters where she's like oh I've met this man and I find him no she never says I find him great a fancy him or anything she's quite skeptical of him and I love the bit where he goes

travelling and comes back and just keeps telling her about he clearly fancies her and keeps telling about all the women that came on to it and men who propositioned him and she says he seems to have spent his whole time tactfully resisting offers of sex from the population of France

is fair She's quite skeptical of him But also a little bit jealous Yeah Later on at university You know he's mentioning other girls And she doesn't quite know where she stands Yeah they obviously had an on off kind of thing

Didn't they? And she's obviously taken stuff out Well she was doing so much reading To impress him Or because of him Or so they could discuss it Although her constant pranks Like doesn't she take a picture of him

On the toilet and put it on the car Of his employer? Yes Oh yeah he's really angry bad He's so angry about And she's constantly pranking which obviously is why she gets on with Sam and Will. And again, I think it's such a funny book.

The bit where she gets them lost in a skip, that they decide she gets Sam in a skip and then realises she can't get him out and then has to get Will in the skip. And then Alan Bennett sees him and lies, she lies their mum and is like, don't tell your mum, don't say anything about it. And Alan Bennett's like, I saw you mocking around with that skip.

Her relationship with the boys is so lovely. It's so lovely. Like the fact that, yeah, she didn't really have any experience as a nanny. and yet all the experience really that you need is the way she is with them which is just to treat them the same as her yeah he's like a big sister really isn't she yeah and she just she buys into

every like their conversation she just wholeheartedly she's very yes and sorry to be improperly she just wholeheartedly buys into what they say and engages with them on their level and obviously their level because of growing up where they have is quite high yeah god like Will is writing a novel

isn't he and he's like 14 but that's why that's why like the conversations between them are so funny because it's not like an adult and children. It's like they're all just really believing in each other and taking each other at face value. Yeah, there's that amazing bit when she bumps the car and she says to Sam, I'm not going to say anything about it to Mary Kay, so you don't mention it okay.

And then Sam busts her and says, Nina crashed the car. And so she's like, no, no, don't worry about it. It's tiny bumps, tiny bump. And she sees that he's hidden his lamb chops under the tablecloths. So she tells him, it's like, oh, Sam's here, like, so petty between the two of them, but it is so funny. Sam not allowed any pudding, banana custard, due to hiding the chops.

It's so delightfully risen. There's lots of cooking. There's so much food. And it's Nina's job to cook. And while she does improve the conversation about recipes and the things that she's made that have disappointed everyone. I know. And her sister said saying, oh, we made your chicken. Thanks, Vic.

They didn't add tarragon, but they liked it. Yeah. They have to eat turkey to lower their cholesterol. Yeah, so she's working out ways to cook with the turkey Which is obviously disgusting And Alan Bennett's always like, you shouldn't have put the peas in it It should have been on the side There's a great bit when he says that she makes that like salad

And she uses tinned mandarin And like he's like oh it's best to use fresh And you can hear her being like, what? Yeah, like who uses fresh? And I yeah Again, I just love that the naivety And the sort of I guess I also come from a family who didn't cook

And then married someone who could cook and having like this famous story when he said I can make you a pasta sauce and I laughed and said who are you Lloyd Grossman and he was like what I was like you can't make pasta sauce how do you make what you're like it comes in a jar and poor Ben had to be like no people can make it and I was like what do you mean

and he showed me well you fry garlic and you get tomatoes and that was like my mind was blown it is mind blowing but if you've grown up middle class with food access like that and I guess yeah I I love that Nina comes obviously in that world of like just yeah cooking pies that are frozen and having to have Alan Bennett of all people

criticise your cooking it's like a really long running joke with me my uni friends that the first week of uni so I went to Oxford so it was quite a culture culture shock and there were lots of people like me at Oxford it wasn't all you know eat Mary Kellilmers yeah but my friend my good friend was like within week one

we were talking about food and she said the line oh my god you've never had a fresh mango and now I say it like even posher than shit I'm like you've never had a fresh mango oh my god which isn't how she talks but it was a pro we really laughed about it because it was like oh my god you didn't you didn't know what you sounded like to me yeah yeah but I hadn't never had mango

or I have a cardo before university no or hummus yeah I'd never had hummus I probably might have had hummus I had hummus after you as a vegetarian a bit of staple yeah yeah there's definitely things that I hadn't had and wasn't aware of, definitely, like, how to, or how to cook. I didn't know how to cook at all. My pasta sauce speciality was Philadelphia with Marmite. So I thought, I knew you could make pasta sauce.

Pesto and mayonnaise for me. That's pretty good. Simple. Oh, tuna mayo sweet corn goes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What classic, there's no cookie involved. The pesto was the gourmet ingredient in that. That's another university discovery.

Yeah. Yeah, Pesto, big times. Yeah. I found another thing, Alan Bennett, talking about going to uni with Mary Kay. I think they went to Oxford. He said, outside of the novels of Nancy Mitford or Evelyn War, I had never come across anyone who behaved so confidently or in such a cosmopolitan fashion. For the week of her finals, she moved into the Randolph Hotel, staying with her father,

whose presence was required due to her threat not to sit the exams. Like she, obviously, Mary Kay comes from a completely, yeah, a completely not even up class. Like it's a whole other world of international educating. Her mother is Russian, Jewish. Her father was living in Brussels. So yeah, it made me laugh that even Alan Bennett was like, bloody hell. But that's interesting that Nina is having this experience. I've got my stepkids going through at the moment that reaching the age of about 20-ish, which is supposedly you're an adult. You're about to move away from home. You're, you're, about to move away from home. you're living your own life, you're meant to be independent,

and yet you're so young and you know nothing about the world and you sort of think you should but you really don't and yet you're expected to start doing things on your own and that Nina, this coincided at the age of 20 with suddenly living with these people who was so confident and had so much opportunity and wealth and interesting language and interesting conversations. And intellect, surrounded by intellect.

intellect and wearing that intellect on their sleeve, which I think is the literati kind of wealth confidence thing, which is, you know, I really get that. There's a thing like there's intellect and there's interesting ideas and there's the confidence to really openly talk about it with neighbours and with family and everything. And the fact that her introduction to adulthood was like, and why was she so calm about it? But then, so I read, I own. I just finished it. I kind of read the bulk of it and then had a gap and I just finished the book on the way here. And this blew my mind.

It seems like just a little bit towards the end. She talks about nonny smoking dope. Oh yeah. She says she tries a toke of it. And she says, I felt relaxed for the first time in my entire life. And I was like, you seem so relaxed. Yeah. She doesn't wear shoes and she's looking after these two kids

that she's got no experience. Yeah. But obviously she isn't relaxed. I say if you do like this book and you find her writing funny, there's three no maybe there's four novels that are about her life in Leicester and I found them like almost DVD extras

like once I discovered the first one is about growing up with her sister and brother and mum in very rural Leicestershire and their dad left them and her mom was divorced and basically they moved they had to move to this tiny village

and they were not just bullied like ostracised like because her mum was a divorcee and like people wouldn't serve them food in the shop like they wouldn't let their children walk home with them like they had this really really tough really tough life because and the dad uh remarried and had other kids and lived in a big they had had a lonely life a quite nice house and nice life and it all disappeared the mom had nothing and the mom had this series of boyfriends who either like whipped her off or stole

money from her and she was the mom is often i mean this is fictionalized but obviously it's coming from somewhere is often drunk and writing plays and constantly saying she's going to like making them perform the plays and there's a bit in this book where she talks about the horses. Oh, she writes about the horses coming down the stairs and it all seemed very sad. And that is in the fiction book where they bring a horse, because they are literally it's not posh horses, it's countryside horses. So they bring the horses in and they get stuck upstairs and it's sort of written as a funny story but you can also see it's basically because they're left alone and they're like 12 and 10

and they have to do a lot of things because their mum is working and not around. And it made me realise of like, yeah, she had been not left alone, but had a very independent lifestyle as a child, I guess, because of the situation her mum was in. And it was really, really awful. And then the second book is about working in a nursing home, which is clearly her sister's story. And the third book is absolutely brilliant. That's reasons to be cheerful. And it's about working at dentist.

And she did work at dentist for like, which is why she constantly comments. on like when they see Samuel Beckett and she notices a thing wrong with his jaw. She said a second case occlusion. So yeah, she had had quite a life and I think she'd basically been working from about 15, 16. That's interesting. Yeah. So it's so different to what, I guess, our generation of like 20, you've left school and left. You've done loads already.

At 20, I think they basically, it's she got kicked out 15, 16 or maybe not kicked out, left school to work. But I would definitely recommend the fiction writing because it's so funny. Okay, so I'm going to ask a controversial. question. Go for it. Because I think Nina herself, and especially when you talk about the other novels, obviously a really fascinating person and an outsider. And that's what's interesting about her being the author of these letters. The people in it, I think, are ultra-conventional. I think they have the kind of quirkiness that comes under sort of middle-class, upper-middle-class behaviour. Like when people say the Queen has a sense of humour. Yes, exactly like that. I think it's a bit

harsh to sweet them all under there. Because Alan Bennett, obviously, is from a very different life to Mary Kerr Wilmers. And Mary Kay Wilmers, even though comes from this extreme wealth, the way she's lived her life is very, not avant-garde, but definitely bohemian. And I guess, also, she doesn't come across as, like, mumsy. She's not like, oh, I'm a busy mum like this. The way she speaks to Nina is so blunt and equally very on a level, like treats her as an equal, isn't patronising to her as like, okay, we'll read that, don't read that.

Like there's some funny stuff about the housework The fact that Nina's the nanny Supposed to be doing the housework And she hires a separate cleaner Because Nina's so shit at it And doesn't say anything to Nina Well she at one point That Nina says something about the Hoover

And she went I'm surprised you knew what it was I just think she comes across It's very funny I think the boys are unique Yeah I think they're my favourite conversations in the book Are her recounting what the boys say With her and to each other

And to their mum And their logic of the world Their logic of the world Yeah I think is it's not just that of children, but it's also not, it's not just that of wealthy young boys. I think it is genuinely very funny and unique. And I think that even if you condense the book into just conversations between a nanny and her wards, that would be a really funny set of conversations.

What about the absence of the father? Because he's not mentioned at all. Yeah, Sam calls him the phone number, doesn't he? Like Sam always said like 31819 is coming round on Saturday, because that's how he answers the phone. story in itself the fact that he's not mentioned at all. That's what I think. Yeah, the omission. You definitely get the feeling there's not a dad in that house, do you?

Like, and Alan Bennett is sort of like... Weird grandfather. Weird uncle, yeah. Even though it's not that old. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, he must be the same age as Mary Kay. Yeah, I definitely, I don't think that relationship is explored at all. No.

It's definitely Nina's very specific, like, she's showing you exactly what she wants to show you and no more and no less. And either you kind of like the world and you're so charmed by it. you're happy to stay there or I guess what I feel about letters is that they are lies and something we know about Nina even in the letters is that she's a liar she sometimes steals a towel she lies all the time she's like they say to what we can't trust anything you say yes so she fibs an interesting thing so I think there's an extension of that where you're reading these letters and even to her sister she's already fictionalising a narrative yeah she's trying to

make it entertaining yes for her sister yeah yeah and also maybe for herself like there must have been moments of being skinned living among wealth, having to cook them turkey burgers and turkey stir fries also expected to do the cleaning. There are still ups and downs.

She still would have been depressed sometimes. It's definitely a rose-tinted view of being 20 and living in London. There's no like, oh that was really shit actually. Like you never really get... Yeah, you don't get a sense of sadness, I suppose. I felt poignancy but not sadness. I think that's why I like.

it because I really feel like it's like comfort. It would be so different, wouldn't it? What you were saying about letters or lies, like to see this exact story in these years, but it was her diaries instead of letters. So then it wasn't what she was trying to present to her sister, but what she really felt and wanted to note down for herself and whether we would see more of the low points,

like her not doing well in her A levels and the deaths that we know very little about and the sort of more real feelings would be, it would be less of a comfort read, but it would be really interesting to see what she really felt about some of those things. She's a Sagittarius. She's a Sagittarius.

I just looked. She's the Sagittarius. What does that? Well, they definitely have a lot of fantasy and a lot of dreaming and a lot of living in their imagination and things are always going to be better far away over here.

One of the things that I really loved, like my high points were when her life, her Lester life, meets the fame of London. So the grandmother coming, going to see a Michael, Frane play. And she wants them to meet Michael

Frayne. She can introduce them to Michael Frayne who wrote noises off that's the play that you're seeing and they're like, why would we want to meet him? Alan Bennett's two doors down. Can you get Anna Bennett right? I loved it.

And then she goes, could have been charming. And her fury that Alan Bennett is funny and nice of them. And then going, can we meet Jonathan Miller? And her going, no, he's moved away. And her going to Derby, which was so funny.

She has to follow through on it and go, he wanted some peace. And then she sees Rick Wail and Adrian. and Eddison in enough license. And there's another bit where she says about Alan Bennett, like, oh, I don't know everyone's going on about him.

And his new plays all right. We watch 40 towers, me and Sample, it was much better. I just love that you also see Alan Bennett's fame rising. At the beginning of the letters, he's well known in that circle. And then by the end, she said, oh, funny to think of Alan Bennett in New York, wonder what he does there.

And if you've ever seen Lady in the Van or the van, so that is the house two doors down. where that woman moved into Alan Bennett's house on the front garden and camps there and doesn't and he lets her stay there. So it's happening on the same street. A lot of stuff having a 55 Gloucester Crescent

I think it is in Hampton. And she said as well, she wished she'd made Alan funnier. But to her, he was just a boring middle class man. He's quite critical of her. They don't really get on at the beginning, which I quite like. It's like they're both sort of interlopers

into the three, the mum of the sands. Yes. So they're sort of jostling for a position. And he's quite, often is... It's rude. He's definitely rude. About things that she's cooked or what she needs to improve.

This is when he says, yesterday I cooked a stew, four hours oven lowest. A, B, came for supper. A, B. Very nice, but you don't really want tin tomatoes in a beef stew. It's a hunter's stew. You don't want tin tomatoes in it, whatever. Whose ever it is?

Yeah, he's very critical. I think you get the sense that they... They learn to love each other, but they're definitely bristling at the beginning. Because she said she didn't know who the hell he was. So she was like, why? is this like weird old man who's not old telling me how to cook things when it's my job which yeah I guess in high you do have to have a sense of who Alan Bennett is I think to really

enjoy this book yeah and if you do know more of the characters I think the more familiar you are with Alan Bennett the more enjoyable it would be yeah in as a character yes it took me a while to realise it was Alan Bennett because it was just A B it does say at the beginning the list of all the people and what they're a list yes there's a list at the beginning you read you read lists before you read letters and lists look who are you read letters and list look who Who's who? And it tells you who everyone is. I'm seeing this for the first time. Oh my God. And it says AB. Michael Frey was going out with Claire Tomlin. Yes, that's mentioned.

No, he was in it and the new Claire Tomlin was in it. I didn't know they were together. I think they say that. Who's Claire Tomlin again? She wrote an amazing Austin autobiography. Yes, playwright and novelist. Biography, obviously. And at the time of this, she was editing another newspaper. The Times, the Trees Supply. Literary editor of the Newsstatesman and the Sunday Times. Oh, cracky. Biographer and journalist. Yeah.

Jonathan Miller, Theatre and opera, director, actor. There you go. That's what she says. A.B. Alan Bennett. I mean, sometimes you do have to read. So I read about 50 pages,

and I was like, it's so weird, because this A.B. Talks a bit like Alan Bennett. It was Alan Bennett. And then that's what I've discovered. It's always, oh, I see. So she's put A.B.

She's protecting him. It's giving him his anonymity. But it is actually Alan Bennett. Okay. There you go. I found another thing that I thought was worthy, that M.K. used to work at Faber.

That's where she started. Oh, did she? Yeah, she went as a secretary when she was very young. She was employed at first as secretary. On one occasion, she thought she might be sacked for saying bugger in front of T.S. Eliot,

whose letters she used to type. Wow. Like, she's literary royalty. That's so good. And I've met Michael Frayne at one of the Faber summer parties. Oh, it all comes full circle. Yeah, there we go.

M.K. would you like to read my letters? They're more texts. They're more WhatsApp messages. Well, this is it. How do we feel about the future of letter books? Like, the Mitford books exist. The Mitford letter books, which again, I love if you love letters, is incredible.

Because they kept all their letters. But there's not going to be letters. Letters of note will eventually run out of letters. I think they're going to come back. I've got a box of letters. Yeah. But they're rubbish. Are you jealous of Nina's letters?

I think you do have to put the effort in like they would have done in the old days. Like they're always doing it in Austin. Yeah, yeah. You know, at your desk. Yeah, because it's your only way to communicate. And she says at the beginning. Or second draft. If you would edit the letter, you'd write a draft,

and then you'd do another one to make it even better in your handwriting need to. In the introduction, in 2023, I think this one is that Nina wrote, 2013, sorry, she says, if I'd had email, these wouldn't exist. Like, it's just because I wanted to talk to my sister about what was going on. And I used to talk to her every night when we lived in Leicester. Yeah. And that's the only reason this exists. Oh, here's some hot gossip.

Stephen Friers is one of the quotes. in the front of the book. Oh. He put it in books of the year. Oh, well. And said very sharp and funny. Wow. So he did like it.

There we go. We'll just choose a last line. This is a good one. It's about Stella and her red tips. This made me think of you, Sarah Pasco. Okay. Because you have said this to me. So she's talking about her friend Stella

and there's a girl called Fiona at Udi who's got red tips on her hair and they're all a bit jealous. Oh, it's about shy people. Yeah. And she says, I applauded this. This is, you have said this to me. There's something annoying about that kind of shy. person. I mean, why should they get away with it when the rest of us have to speak? If you're shy,

fine, but you shouldn't be allowed to have red tips in your hair. I mean, you're either shy or you're not. And Pasco has said to me, shyness is rudeness. Yeah, it's not acceptable. And I thought, that's why she reminded me of you a bit. We all find it hard. Oh, we're all struggling. I feel like there's a minority of people who find communicating conversation really easy and enjoyable. Sure. And then I think there's more people who are normal and struggle with it and find difficult and a chore. And forcing themselves on behalf of other people to make people feel comfortable. Yes.

So, yeah, and shy people don't bother. They let you stand there, floundering, feeling uncomfortable. I think some people are genuinely shy. Oh, you're always sticking up for shy people, aren't you, Carrie? Shyness is nice. Without the shy people, who would be the audience? Yeah, I mean, I find it really hard socially, so I always feel sorry for them because I think, God, I find it hard, and I'm babbling and making the best of it.

You can't even do that. But maybe they only find it as hard as you, but you're trying harder. Yeah, that's what I think. Oh, yeah. I think it's the number. not finding it harder, they're just not bothering. And on that hot, political note. I don't expect they'll be complaining.

There are you to be hiding behind their fans. We're really slamming the shy. Yeah, I'm not scared of them, that's why. I am. Yeah, they want to watch the shy ones. I don't mean any of this. I'm sorry for you and I hope you're okay. You don't have to talk.

Please don't hurt me. The shy ones you have to look out for. Yeah, there's always the quiet ones, isn't it? Quiet and shy different. Oh, you don't mind quiet? Yeah. I've got no problem with quiet. Oh, just shy.

Shh. Simmer down. Thank you, Rachel. Thank you, Rachel. Thank you for listening to The Weirdo's Book Club. You can find Rachel on Twitter at Rachel Paris. Next week's book guest is Living My Best Life, Hun, by London Hughes, and we will be joined by London herself.

My novel Weirdo is in the shops, as is Carriad's book. You are not alone, different sections. Thank you for reading with us. We like reading with you.