Reasons to Be Cheerful by Nina Stibbe
Set in Leicester in the 1980s, the story focusses on Lizzie Vogel who has just moved from her rural village home to the bright lights of the big city to start work as a dental nurse. It offers her a chance to escape her alcoholic, novel-writing mother and it even comes with its own little flat situated above the practice. What she didn’t reckon on was her new boss, Dr JP Wintergreen, being a barely competent dentist, borderline racist who is obsessed with joining the freemasons.
She soon realizes that being independent isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Her driving instructor becomes her best friend; her first boyfriend prefers birdwatching to sex and that the grass isn’t always greener…
However so many ridiculous situations arise that the reader cannot help but smile, laugh and fall in love with this story!
