Man at the Helm

10 hrs. 29 min.

Romance & Prose

Language Russian

Author Nina Stibbe

Narrator Olga Shorokhova

Description

After their parents’ divorce, Lizzy, her older sister, younger brother, and their Labrador Debbie are forced to move out of a luxurious London mansion into a crooked little country cottage. Around them are meadows and open spaces and beauty—only neighbors look darkly, no one cooks food, the washing machine has rebelled, and their mother writes plays without stopping. Lizzy and her sister, worried that sooner or later they’ll be sent to an orphanage and their mother left alone with her plays, decide to take care of their future themselves. First of all, they have to decide on “the person at the helm”—in plain terms, the man in the house. In the early 1970s, even a single mother from an aristocratic family is treated with little respect, and until “the person at the helm” appears in the house, life won’t get better. That’s how the grand campaign to select suitable candidates begins. A witty, nonstop funny novel that reminds of both Sue Townsend’s “The Adrian Mole Diaries” and P.G. Wodehouse’s “Jeeves and Wooster.”