A novel of George Orwell in 1920s BURMA
A year-long diary set in LONDON
4th December 2023
Went to London, Took the Dog by Nina Stibbe, a year-long diary set in LONDON.
This memoir-cum-diary sounded intriguing. The author is suffering from a sort of empty nest syndrome, so takes her dog, Peggy, finds a place to lodge (with a famous author) and settles in. This is twenty years after she left London and moved to Cornwall.
There is a “Who’s Who” of the people the reader will encounter right at the beginning, some of whom are household names (if you spend any time in the literary world, you will recognise several and if you don’t, then you are on your own) and others in her circle, who pass through to enrich the narrative. Very early on this felt like a modern day – and more mature – spin off from the Adrian Mole Diary series, written as a stream of consciousness, compartmentalised by days. This is the author’s diary recorded over a year. Covid is still a thing.
She has a beady eye on events and people, there is a lot of gardening going on and much discussion about leaving the hosepipe engorged with water (apparently this isn’t good for that particular type of watering device). Given she is an older woman, there is sadly the old trope of harping on about wee incontinence (I know 🙄), not to mention HRT and piles. There are eating encounters with Nick Hornby (of About a Boy and High Fidelity fame) and possible fleeting glimpses of her landlady, spotted from the top of a bus, exiting all kinds of establishments (including a botox emporium). Possibly it wasn’t her landlady at all.
There are laugh-out-loud moments but not enough to really prove satisfying. When I found myself actually making myself laugh at some of the diary entries, I realised that I and the author were in a bit of trouble. I am actually not laughing – I feel the opposite of hilarity – at the description of her grown-up children, drunk, the two of them careening around the streets (pavements) on a single e-bike. She is very critical of the coffee grinder the landlady’s daughter buys for the landlady, her godson is thinking of having a tattoo on his calf (I hope he was happy with her sharing that) and Cathy Rentzenbrink (famous author) likes to watch wrestling quite a lot. It’s all done very nicely but somehow the innumerable indiscreet references don’t chime with the current Zeitgeist and feel a bit cringeworthy. Clearly, some acquaintances, whom she includes, are given anonymity by means of “[redacted]”, and clearly didn’t want their lives forensically plastered across the book. The diary is painfully honest in parts and kudos to her for sharing (OK, over-sharing) the ins and outs of her time in the city.
I don’t know, it should have ticked all the boxes for me (given my similar age to the author), but it just didn’t. It is, though, good on London.
Tina for the TripFiction Team
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