One Day I Shall Astonish the World charts 30 years in the life of Susan, PA to the Vice Chancellor of Rutland University. On a life-changing day in 1990, Susan meets not only her future husband, Roy, but perhaps more significant to the story, her future on-off friend, Norma.
Norma is the daughter of the owners of The Pin Cushion, a dressmaking shop at which Susan has a Saturday job. Although both young women are intelligent and ambitious, it’s made clear by Norma’s mother that Susan is not to regard Norma as a personal friend, and the scene is set for Susan’s life as perennial underachiever while Norma soars.
If you’ve read any Nina Stibbe books before, you’ll know that she excels at uncovering the humour in small, every day events, and Susan makes a sharp-eyed commentator on all she sees as her life ambitions are gradually thwarted, from dropping out of university when she discovers she is pregnant to learning to take a back seat while Norma hogs the spotlight at every opportunity.
There are darkly funny moments throughout the novel, such as the dogging-related death of one character and Susan’s ponderings on whether her mother’s life-changing train accident could have been inadvertently caused by the writer Ian McEwan.
The narrative takes us right up to the coronavirus pandemic, and there is a change of pace in the last few chapters as we’re suddenly taken out of a novel that feels strictly fictional and into events that most of us will be able to empathise with as Susan and her family are faced with a health crisis.
One Day I Shall Astonish the World is a fairly gentle yet absorbing read, detailed throughout with mischievous observations of the less attractive aspects of human nature.
Still Got Manners 