It’s the early 1980s and our narrator, Lizzie Vogel, is about to leave home for the first time, and move from her village into the city of Leicester. Her first fulltime job is to be a dental assistant working for the awful JP and his partner Tammy. The job comes with its own flat, and initially reluctantly, Lizzie leaves the family home and moves in.

There is much humour to be had early 1980s dentistry, the introduction of McCain’s Oven Chips and freemasonry.

This is the third book in Nina Stibbe’s wonderful series about Lizzie, although they all work as standalone novels. It follows Man at the Helm, when Lizzie and her sister tried to find a partner for their newly single mother, and Paradise Lodge where Lizzie worked part time in an old people’s home while still at school.

The details are as ever pitch perfect. Lizzie devours waiting room copies of magazines like Women’s Own, tells horror stories of meals in Fenwick’s department store, and notes that a local accountant has built his own nuclear bunker, but it’s supposed to be secret.

As well as moving out, Lizzie is dealing with having her first proper boyfriend and learning to drive. But Lizzie moving out has meant that her mother is able to get on with a novel, a science fiction epic that she is determined will be published by Faber & Faber.

Stibbe handles all this masterfully, and it’s the eye to detail that absolutely convinces you.  

Thanks to Penguin Books (UK), Viking and Netgalley for my ARC. Reasons to be Cheerful is published on 28 March 2019. And no, this book is nothing to do with the excellent Geoff Lloyd/Ed Miliband podcast of the same name!