Paradise Lodge

By Nina Stibbe

Subjects: England, fiction, Fiction, family life, general, Fiction, general, Nursing homes, Teenage girls, Manners and customs, Fiction, family life, New York Times reviewed, Fiction, Social life and customs

Description: Fifteen-year-old Lizzie Vogel takes a job as an "auxiliary nurse" at Paradise Lodge, a home for the elderly, and learns that her job entails helping the patients (frequently) to the bathroom. What begins as a way to avoid school and earn some spending money (for the finer things in life, like real coffee and beer shampoo) quickly becomes the education of a lifetime as Lizzy wades through the day-to-day humdrum and drama of this ramshackle refuge for the elderly. And when a rival nursing home threatens, Lizzie discovers that the staff and residents of Paradise Lodge have become her surrogate family, and the only place she's ever felt she belongs--