There is no disguising it – at least that is what you think at first. This book is a potboiler – or, given its subject, a turkey brick. You can almost hear the publishers – or Nina Stibbe herself – calculating: how about following the success of Love, Nina (her memoir about being a nanny to LRB editor Mary-Kay Wilmers’ sons) and a couple of amusing novels with a festive bestseller? I opened An Almost Perfect Christmas preparing to be underwhelmed, only to find myself chuckling at every other page. By the end – or, actually, not long after the beginning – I was a convert. This book is the seasonal garnish we all need. There is no subject upon which Stibbe could not entertain.
Having said that, it’s startling to discover the extent of her resistance to turkey. Christmas chops, her annual rebellion, sound a bleak-midwinter alternative. But you start to sympathise as she reminisces about childhood Christmases and her mother’s frantic efforts, as a non-cook, with the turkey. Can we believe that Nina was asked to point a hairdryer at the turkey’s frozen core to defrost a bird bought at the last minute from Iceland? I think we can. With Stibbe, what she writes is often so outlandish, you suspect it must (with the exception of a Christmas lunch story flagged up as fiction) be true.
The book is light – which is not the same as superficial. There is the extraordinary tale of her father, who was once a Fenwick Santa, awarded the job after having built a particularly choice Christmas grotto. Stibbe claims that, after his defection from his family, she used to search for him in department stores in December and sit on more than one alien knee in the hope of a reunion. The “Swimming Pool Santa” is an eye-popping account of one of these Santas turning out to be her mother’s boyfriend – a married man and a researcher into the effect of DH Lawrence’s explorations of sexuality on the psyche of the modern woman.
Memoir, short story, advice – this is a mixture of offerings, a spicy pot pourri. About Christmas presents, there are more don’ts than dos. There is a convincing argument against extras designed to beef up/apologise for feeble gifts. These, Stibbe dubs “bulker-uppers”, ending the section with the disarming thought: “It has just occurred to me that the book you’re now reading might well be a bulker‑upper.”
There is a diverting account of a Christmas party in which Stibbe compiles the playlist, determined to find the ultimate Silent Night. The trouble is that she gets distracted and fails to single out one track, with the result that every conceivable treatment of Silent Night gets aired at her far-from-silent party.
I like the sound of her own Christmas (the chops are, it would seem, now on hold). I find her emphasis on imperfection, human error and botched efforts uplifting. She wisely advises: “Don’t aim for a perfect Xmas, aim for an Xmassy Xmas.” In her case, this includes a homemade angel Gabriel who looks “exactly like Alan Titchmarsh”. I loved her account of buying a small potted Christmas tree from a shop assistant who perversely did not want to sell it – a particular type of opinionated person I have never before seen so brilliantly characterised – or, come to think of it, characterised at all.
About Christmas pudding I felt en rapport with Stibbe, but I won’t dish up her views as a spoiler here. I also agree with her wise observation about mince pies: “Roughed-up shop ones look homemade.” She writes extensively on round robins (give us the bird rather than the letter any day). She insists she likes these self-serving circulars. They are “the sitcom you never planned to watch – you’d heard of the characters, but didn’t really want to watch the show”. And I relished her Christmas glossary, from which you get a keen, if scattered, idea of what her Christmas season is like. It ends with “Zest: a vital ingredient in many Christmas dishes”. But the essential zest, I’d say, is Nina Stibbe herself.
• An Almost Perfect Christmas by Nina Stibbe is published by Viking (£9.99). To order a copy for £8.49 go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99
