Man at the Helm

About the book

The very start of Lizzie Vogel's story. From the much-loved author of Love, Nina, discover a wildly comic, brilliantly sharp-eyed novel about one family's fall from grace.

'All hail a book that's funny!' Barbara Trapido

*****

Meet Lizzie Vogel, 9.

Lizzie is concerned about her newly divorced mother; thirty-one years old and trapped in a hostile village in the English countryside with only three young children and a Labrador for company. It isn't that having a husband is good, but in 1970s rural Leicestershire, not having one is bad. The women in the village think Lizzie's mother is after their husbands - and no one will let the children into the Brownies!

Worried about their mother's drinking, her...