What is so marvellous about Stibbe as a writer is that she is so acutely observant of every day life. And she is brilliant at pinning it down and in a few, deft sentences, showing you the absurdities and the horrors of ordinary life.

The only interesting character is Honey, and although everyone talks about how wonderful she is, they don't actually seem to understand or like her very much. Warm and wonderfully well-observed . . . One Day I Shall Astonish The World reminds us that the richness of life is in its small details, not the grand plans. This is author Stibbe at her entertaining and heartwarming best * Sunday Express * An angry, powerful book seething with love and outrage for a community too often stereotyped or ignored.

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I think I should have read the blurb better for this book, as with the title I was expecting either some coming of age story, or for someone to tire of their dull existence and overhaul their whole life. I'd also seen lots of quotes about how funny this was and was really looking forward to it.

I started off highlighting all the brilliant observations and one-liners but had to give up because there were so many. Nina Stibbe makes being funny look easy, but that's just because she's very, very good at it' Clare Chambers, author of Small Pleasures One Day I Shall Astonish the World by the always entertaining Nina Stibbe is a story of female friendship * Irish Times, Books To Look Out For In 2022 * Funny, kind, sad, relevant, and raucous in all the right places. I loved it so much -- Daisy BuchananA delightfully comic taleof the ups and downs of a female friendship over 30 years, in which the author of Love, Nina and Reasons to Be Cheerful casts her eye over marriage, motherhood and the ageing process." I love everything Nina Stibbe writes and this was my favourite of the novels. It's so sharp and painful and brilliantly funny. There are sentences you could eat for Christmas dinner. If you haven't read it already - you probably have but just in case - I really do think you'd love it -- Katherine Rundell Funny, charming, odd-in-the-best-way and gorgeously uplifting! A delight from start to finish * Marian Keyes on 'Reasons to be Cheerful' *

Funny, charming, odd-in-the-best-way and gorgeously uplifting! A delight from start to finish.”— MARIAN KEYES Clever and funny, it takes a sharp look at the intricacies of marriage, friendship, work and driving. As with all Stibbe's writing there is a pleasingly perfect balance of wisdom with jokes' Cathy Rentzenbrink For beautifully funny and well-observed comic writing, Nina Stibbe is your go-to author. In her latest release, a tale of lifelong friendship between Susan and Norma, she explores the mistakes, rivalries and love we all experience in life' Stylist, Best Novels for 2022 I love Nina Stibbe and her new novel, One Day I Shall Astonish the World, is such a lovingly observed testament to the complexities and profundities of female friendship -- Elizabeth Day As a comic novelist, Stibbe is so truly incomparable, I can only describe this perfect novel as Stibbe meets Stibbe, with a touch of Stibbe. (And if you love Nina Stibbe…you’ll love this.) For as long as I could make it last, the world just felt a bit nicer. A true gift of a novel, I utterly adored it."— MEG MASON, author of Sorrow and Bliss

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Very few writers can find the delicate balance between heartbreak and hilarity like Nina Stibbe * Red Magazine * If you like books with big plots and action, this will not be one for you! It spans 30 years and Susan leads a very quiet life. What this mainly focuses on is observations on life and the relationships between the characters, particularly Susan and Norma. They go from very close friends to hardly talking on a personal level, there's some undercurrents of frenemies at times. Norma is almost like a mirror to what Susan's life could have been if marriage and children hadn't haltered her education and career. At times I felt so sorry for Susan, aching for recognition but at times she is very frustrating, especially when she doesn't stand up for herself with Norma. Three woman who join together to rent a large space along the beach in Los Angeles for their stores—a gift shop, a bakery, and a bookstore—become fast friends as they each experience the highs, and lows, of love. Susan and Norma have been best friends for years, at first thrust together by force of circumstance (a job at The Pin Cushion, a haberdashery shop in 1990s Leicestershire) and then by force of character (neither being particularly inclined to make friends with anyone else). But now, thirty years later, faced with a husband seeking immortality and Norma out of reach on a wave of professional glory, Susan begins to wonder whether she has made the right choices about life, love, work, and, most importantly, friendship.