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Books

Chaos among the commodes in Nina Stibbe’s old folks’ home

Stibbe’s teenage heroine tries to make sense of the eccentric inmates and a mountain of unpaid bills at Paradise Lodge

28 May 2016

9:00 AM

28 May 2016

9:00 AM

Paradise Lodge Nina Stibbe

Viking, pp.279, £12.99, ISBN: 9780241240243

A card in a shop window — ‘non-unionised, auxiliary nurses sought… 35p per hour. Ideal for outgoing compassionate females’ — plunges 15-year-old Lizzie Vogel into the turmoil of Paradise Lodge, a local old people’s home:

I didn’t want another year of trying to cheat the vending machine, relying on handouts and lifts and third-hand information, medicated shampoo, sugar sandwiches and scrounging cigarettes, babysitting for neighbours just to steal a pot of jam or some good quality teabags.

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