Reasons to Be Cheerful delivers laughs with real tenderness
(The Guardian Books Blog)

From the dentist tackling his own teeth to the teens discovering a new form of contraception, Nina Stibbe´s characters are ridiculously touchingWhen Nina Stibbe´s Reasons to Be Cheerful won last year´s Wodehouse Bollinger prize for comic fiction, the judges explained that it was because it made them all laugh out loud. This quality was deemed all the more vital since the 2018 award had been withheld after nothing on that shortlist provoked audible yucks.David Campbell, one of the 2019 judges and publisher at Everyman´s Library called Reasons to Be Cheerful `a comic tour de force. We were eager to find a book this year that would make each of the judges laugh out loud. Nina Stibbe has achieved that with aplomb.` Continue reading...