An Almost Perfect Christmas - Hardcover

Nina Stibbe was born in Leicester, England, and is the author of the highly acclaimed memoir Love, Nina, the novel Man at the Helm, which was shortlisted for the Lingerer Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction, and the novel Paradise Lodge. She now lives in Cornwall with her partner and their two children.

PRAISE FOR AN ALMOST PERFECT CHRISTMAS:

"AN ALMOST PERFECT CHRISTMAS is an introduction to Nina's England, a place filled with people named Bunny Wedgwood and sister's called Vic. It's an England where everyone loves dogs and is slightly, delightfully batty. It's an England that makes you long to spend your next Christmas there."―Ruth Reichl, New York Times Book Review

"This book is the seasonal garnish we all need. There is no subject upon which Stibbe could not entertain"―Kate Kellaway, The Guardian

"From the bestselling author of Love, Nina comes a hilarious ode to a Christmas season of imperfectly thawed turkeys and desserts set ablaze."―New York Post

"Stibbe has a few words for people who love and hate Christmas in this little collection...Funny, smart, sweet, and tender, this is greater than a gift book and readable any time of year."―Booklist

"Stibbe's deadpan first-person delivery once again balances quirky charm with beady insight...Another deft helping of absurd social comedy and unconventional wisdom from a writer of singular, decidedly English gifts."
―Kirkus

"Lizzie Vogel is back. Now 15, she's picked up a job at Paradise Lodge, a Leicester home for the aging that has fallen on hard times...The home provides English writer Stibbe's novel with an incredible patchwork of characters and their eccentricities, and Lizzie's observations of her family, coworkers, geriatric charges, and sundry enemies are wise, hilarious, and of an emotional frankness that's all her own...soaked through with charm."
―Booklist

"A comic romp about aging and belonging."
―Anderson Tepper, Vanity Fair


"Sweetness and wit from Nina Stibbe. You won't find a funnier, more original confidante than Lizzie Vogel, a teen who's taken a job in a nursing home, at first just hoping to pay for some nice shampoo but eventually sucked into a full-on farce. Truancy, elder abuse, the death of Elvis Presley--there seems to be nothing the author of Love, Nina can't play for good-natured laughs and a sneaky touch of wisdom."
―Kim Hubbard, People


"The priceless, pragmatic English youngsters who put their mother on the marriage market in last year's delightful Man at the Helm, are back and practicing their skills on a spate of new victims. In Stibbe's newest novel, Lizzie Vogel is now a teenager and hard at work in her first job at a chaotic old-age home. There, she helps a nurse find a husband (who will also operate as a 'retirement plan'). Lizzie, who finds herself feeling more at home than she's ever felt in her life, helps a cast of eccentrics save the home from a rival."
―Billy Heller, The New York Post's Required Reading