Paradise Lodge Kindle Edition

Anyone who has ever worked in a nursing home in almost any capacity will recognize the wonderfully drawn emotional (and often humorous) qualities in author Nina Stibble's "Paradise Lodge." It's a mainstream novel set in the U.K. In 1977, bringing into play 15-year-old protagonist Lizzie, who accepts a job at Paradise Lodge, an aging but still nicely appointed nursing home with a cast of nurses and young caregivers like Lizzie — who far prefers working with the aging patients and chain-smoking nurses than going to school.Lizzie learns on her first day that bringing patients to the bathroom, or what Paradise Lodge teaches her must be called the "comfort zone," is an arduous, time-consuming task. But she falls in love with a lot of the patients, and I can attest that doing so is altogether NOT uncommon between staff and patients, even today. No, I wasn't a nurse. But I worked as communications director for two modern nursing homes and had loads of encounters with staff and patients. When patients die, yeah, it's a loss. When they wait too long for call bells to be answered, it's a dreadful issue.But Stibble, with gentle humor and poignant descriptions of encounters between young Lizzie and staff, tells a larger story, really. For me, it's one of respect, growing up and, well, in the case of patients, growing increasingly toward their final act.What surprises Lizzie again and again is her understanding of the elderly, what she learns from them, and the reality that the elderly have much, much to teach.It doesn't matter that the book was published in the U.K. It's making waves across the pond, and it should. Any one of us one day might require services from a skilled nursing facility because our bodies fail us. Lizzie learns that and so much more, and in a beautifully rendered descriptive way that only a genuinely gifted writer can convey.You don't have to be a nurse or certified nursing assistant to enjoy this novel. You just have to acknowledge that life moves on for the young and the old. Some of that moving on is funny. Some isn't. But it will resonate because in the end, we will all travel the path that brings us to somewhere we may not want to be. I hope a Lizzie is there for me.

Enjoyable light read for summer. Young girl becomes overly involved in working in a failing rest home. She has a crazy home life, wild friend who is a co worker and she describes all the residents as well as her day in detail. Meanwhile, she has neglected her schooling. Lots of English expressions to figure out, but fun nevertheless.

Loved this book. Even though I had to google a lot of the words and terms there was no question I wanted to stay with the story. In fact part of the fun of the story was words and terminology I had never heard before! It was absolutely unique and so well written.

This book delighted me; it was full of surprises and wonderful characters. I thoroughly enjoyed reading Paradise Lodge and will definitely be reading more Nina Stibbe.

i already gave it away to someone to read. Good book. Would purchase another by this author.

This is a warm, funny, very human story that holds your attention from beginning to end.

I didn't realize how much I'd love this book from the description. I loved the main character and how she felt about everyone she came in contact with. What a beautifully written story.

Didn't care for this one.....finished it only because I was sure it would get better.

This is the sequel to author’s “Man at the Helm” (see my Amazon review). It’s 1977, and Lizzie, the narrator in both books, is now fifteen. At home, her mother has found a Man at the Helm, had a child by him, and would later marry him; but she is still rather weird at times.Lizzie wants to earn some money, and she takes a job as auxiliary nurses at a rather run-down old age home called Paradise Lodge, at 35p per hour, though it means a lot of truanting from school, and of course Lizzie falls behind in her O level work. The account of the life at the home is all the more vivid because (as we learn in the Acknowledgements at the end) Nina Stibbe had herself worked at a nursing home as a teenager in the 1970s. We are spared none of sad and disagreeable aspects of looking after old people, though all of this is told with wry humour. Lizzie actually liked it there and is kind and caring throughout. The atmosphere among the staff is pleasant and she makes friends with the patients (some very well-described characters among them), with the full-time nurses and even with the Matron, a sad and pathetic figure whom the nurses did not much like, and who is, for part of the story, in charge since the owner of the home is old and decrepit and his more competent wife had left him.The wife actually set up a rival old age home not far away, and it attracted residents who might otherwise have come to Paradise Lodge to replace those who had died or had left because they had been there only for convalescence. Some nurses left and the home went further downhill. Occasionally they ran out of food because they had run out money, and the suppliers would not supply until they had been paid. Sometimes Lizzie was coping on her own, and got into all sorts of difficulties, but she seems never to have lost her temper.Then the Matron becomes downgraded as the home got a new manager, tasked with the job of rehabilitating the business. She was a black lady with a foreign accent, called Sister Saleem; the nurses never had the courage to ask her where she came from. The home is now run more professionally. Sister Saleem produces a small glossy pamphlet and it also announced an Open Day. For this, all sorts of performances by the staff and some of the patients are being planned. The wedding of Lizzie’s mother had been booked for the same day, and the only way Lizzie could be at both events was for the wedding to become one of the attractions at the Open Day! (I expected some hilarious account of that day when it came – but it was pretty tame.)There are some surprising revelations at the end about one of the patients and about Matron. Also at the very end, we learn how Lizzie returned to full-time schooling, though there is no proper description of how she really felt about that.I don’ think it is as good as the previous volume, and, as in the case of its predecessor, the first half is much better than the second half, which doesn’t have any real plot but consists of a string of incidents. These continue to be humorously described, but for me that wasn’t enough and felt rather mechanical.

I loved this book and found it tapped into a sweet spot of nostalgia for me having spent some time at a similar age in the 70's living in Leicester. Nina's descriptions are so evocative that I found I had a clear image in my mind of the place and characters, as though I was sat round the table in Paradise lodge. But there is much more to it than that, so many thoughtful insights on growing up and growing old, without any pretense that it is easy. Nina wraps humour and heartbreak into a very readable and enjoyable experience - I am looking forward to reading the next instalment very much.

I absolutely loved this book. It is so rare for me to actually find comedy literature amusing, but this had me laughing out load throughout - and at times crying too. It's just a really nice story about a girls life with her siblings and mother set in the East Midlands. It was refreshing for it not to be set in London, I find it so hard to relate to the usual stories aimed at women about "single marketing executives in London", which has no similarities to my life whatsoever. Whilst this girls life does not mirror my own, her life as a child is certainly very relatable. This book is quality definitely worth a read.

I love Nina Stibbe's writing and have previously read 'Love, Nina' (my favourite) and 'Man at the Helm'. 'Paradise Lodge' picks up the story of 15 year old Lizzy Vogel shortly after the point at which 'Man at the Helm' finishes. All three books are full of great observations about the period and place in which they are set - in this case 1970s Leicestershire.Lizzy and her best friend's sister get jobs as nursing auxiliaries at a local old people's home. Lizzy's family are struggling financially and she wants a job so that she can buy Linco Beer Shampoo and Maxwell House coffee. Lizzy is soon skipping school and getting a very different education in life at the Paradise Lodge. The book is enriched by her accounts of dealing with the elderly, sometimes batty, often incontinent residents and her tales of the behaviour of the staff, including the possibly completely unqualified Matron, the often drunk and usually sad Owner, and a cast of nurses and various assistants. There are plenty of feisty old folk, devious relatives and the whole cast are living hand to mouth after the owner's wife runs off to open a competing old people's home.The book is inspired by Stibbe's real-world experience of working in a slightly less shambolic care home and the level of detail and observation could only be due to deep personal experience. At times the sub-plot of the deputy head and her step-father seems a bit TOO far fetched, and the lax attention to truancy seems hard to believe, but most of the book has the mark of authenticity that makes it hard not to feel like the reader is actually IN the home, with a faint scent of stale pee and 4711 cologne, probably with a waft of over-cooked cabbage.Stibbe avoids some of the more obvious endings no doubt because that's just how life is. Lizzy's yearning for her friend's Chinese boyfriend might go somewhere but equally might not, but always seems very authentic.I recently read another book - Too young to be Old by Frank Kusy (you can find it amongst my reviews) - set at a similar time and in a similar care home and 'Paradise Lodge' endorsed comments made by Kusy that care homes in that era were very different than they are now. Residents tended to be less 'ill', far less likely to have dementia or to become violent. I can only think that the fear the elderly have today about going into a home were probably not so pronounced back in the 70s when places like Paradise Lodge provided a more genteel board and lodging for the elderly and lonely.

The continued adventures of teenager Lizzie Vogal in the old people's home. There is less of her family in this sequel and it's less laugh-aloud funny than the previous one, but still very enjoyable.