Customer Reviews

The Blessing

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

My only real complaint about "The Blessing" is that it is not told by Fanny (as is The Pursuit of Love, Love in a Cold Climate and Don't Tell Alfred) - but it is part of the series. Sigi, Grace and Charles Edouard turn up as crucial characters in 'Don't tell Alfred' so it is part of the series of four - and I just love Fanny and her wonderfully eccentric relatives.

This is the story of Grace - beautiful, glamorous but slightly unintellectual British girl who has a hurried love match with wildly attractive and irresistible Frenchman, Charles-Edouard. Within 2 weeks they are married but then only see each other once in the next 7 years. A happy consequence of those first impassioned days is The Blessing - a son, Sigismond. Charles-Eduoard returns, sweeping Grace and Sigismond off to France and a new life. She has to come to terms with France, french life, and a very, very French husband who loves women. Unfortunately for Grace and Charles-Eduoard, what they don't realise is that it is also about Sigismond coming to terms with growing up with two parents and not quite so much attention. The marriage falls apart by degrees weighed down by Grace's expectations, a cunning, scheming young son and a staunchly English Nanny.

Mitford writes characters with such a light touch and such irreverent good fun it is wonderful to watch the whole relationship peeled back like layers of an onion.... Its enjoyable sharp social satire of life just after the war in Britain and France.

-- as Nancy Mitford herself would have said. The Blessing, along with Love in a Cold Climate, represents the best of her always hilarious fiction. Evelyn Waugh gets all the credit for being the satirist of their generation (if you really want to be amused, read their correspondence, expertly edited by Charlotte Mosley, Mitford's niece-in-law), but there was no one funnier than Mitford then nor, alas, is there anyone as funny now, a fact which says much -- none of it good -- about our current society and how (groan) seriously we all take ourselves. I mean, think about it: the woman lived through the Blitz, a sister's attempted suicide, another sister's imprisonment (tho' Nancy herself was partially responsible for that one), her brother's death in WW II, and several miscarriages. If she could still poke such brilliant fun at herself and others, then why must we all act like self-absorbed guests at one giant pity party? What I wouldn't give for a good shrieker these days.

Nancy Mitford's comic variant on 'The American' is certainly more FUN than Henry James ever was; after a bitty start, it turns into a classic comedy about cultural clashes, loneliness, abandonment, love. Mitford's eye is strictly realistic in her attitudes, if not her style - in the tacit spaces, one can hear Grace's howls of despair.

The book is full of exquisite characters - Charles-Edouard, dashing, aristocratic, Resistance hero who uses his Frenchness as an excuse for serial adultery; Sigi, the Blessing ot the title, a devious monster who sees his happiness in his parents' divorce; the variously sophisticated and cynical grandes dames of French society; the spectacularly pompous 'Heck' Dexter, millionaire advisor to the US President. But Mitford not only has a gift for portraying eccentricity; she somehow makes dogged dullness palpable as in Grace's half-hearted suitor Hughie.

This is Mitford's most Waugh-like novel - full of short, pregnant, elliptical scenes, told in terse, comic sentences. The frustrating lack of structure means that scenes don't accumulate emotionally as they do in Waugh, leaving the book feeling a little thin (unlike her masterpieces, 'The Pursuit of Love' and 'Love in a Cold Climate'), but with this much pleasure, who cares?

Nancy Mitford is so baad. She (and Alice Roosevelt Longworth) have a shared sentiment: "If you have absolutely nothing good to say about anyone, sit right down here next to me." Her story is a witty frolic. She pokes marvelous fun at the staid British virtues of bad food, bad weather and cold country houses. Usually I am very unamused at some Brit writing in a condescending manner about us colonists other wise known as American citizens. But Ms. Mitford catches an intelligent, but-oh-so-boring American perfectly. You can even hear the corporate cadence.

I did not find it dated, it wears well, and now I'll have to go on a Nancy Mitford hunt.

That even includes Love in a Cold Climate, actually! I thought this book was very funny and quite brilliant.

It follows the marriage of a sweet English belle to a handsome, wealthy frenchman from a very well connected family. The marriage is rocky, as the two come from very different backgrounds, but they have their son, "the blessing," to tie them together.

As Nancy lived in Paris and grew up in England, she obviously knows a lot of the details about living in both places. The details are perfect. If you are interested in what Paris high society was like in the 1950's, you should definately read this book: Nancy obviously knows all of the gossip.

If you've read "What Maisie Knew" you MUST read this book. I saw this book as quite a brilliant parody of that one. If I said more, it would give too much away, so just take my word for it.

I've been on a Mitford roll this summer since I read Mary Lovell's book about the Mitford sisters. Have read all of Nancy's novels, this being the last.

I loved it for the way she poked fun at the French and English, too. A reviewer on 1/3/2000, I believe it was, missed the whole point. The characters in this book aren't vapid. They are upper class English and French who quietly carry on affairs. Everyone knows, but no one talks. Well, they do among themselves, but we peasants aren't to know.

I did not have trouble with the few French phases here and there as I read French. They were not as numerous or long as in some of her other books.

Grace may not have been the smartest person in the world, but it was a good story. I felt sorry for her at the dinners where she was unaware of the undercurrents going on around her. Her father was also an interesting character.

"The Blessing" otherwise known as Sigismund was an awful child, but with a name like that what could you expect? When you think about it the title is a joke as he certainly didn't seem to be a blessing. I wonder what other terrible things he did as he got older?

What I really like about this book is that it never gives into the temptation to take itself too seriously. Mitford draws a great deal of both pathos and humor into her portrait of Grace-- a lovely but not terribly clever woman.

When Grace marries Charles-Edouard she doesn't carefully consider what it means to be marrying into Paris society. She doesn't carefully consider anything at all. A war bride with a young child, she's bundled off to Paris after her hardly-seen husband returns from fighting. Charles-Edouard has a flexible set of ideas about fidelity; her son decides he'd be better off with divorced parents; and nobody in Paris considers them married since they didn't formalize their union in a church.

The book suffers somewhat from a meandering form, but the writing sparkles with wit and life.

No one would write a book like Nancy Mitford today, so we should thank God for the fact that she did it and it is still in print. I began my interest in Nancy Mitford's fiction after reading Waugh , Wodehouse, and Anthony Powell. I think there is a connection but cant exactly describe it. Perhaps its the use of humour to tease without tormenting. I recommend this book for those who want to spend an early afternoon with a chatting friend who knows all but does not feel the need to tell all .

Oh dear oh dear...in these therapeutic days I suppose the characters in "The Blessing" would be obliged to confront their addictions, and natter on about their dyfunctions to solemn counselors -- and in the process bore us, the readers, to shrieks!

Nancy Mitford has a keen yet tolerant eye for the foibles and follies of humanity, to say nothing of a positively wicked ear for dialogue that reveals a character in a sentence or two. A delight and a grand giggle, from start to finish!

What could be a better plot for a quick weekend read? Girl falls in love with dashing french soilder, girl gets pregnant with said solider, solider goes to war, returns seven years later, picks up wife and child and drive to France. Simple, right? Alas, no, the simplicity ends here. Once in France, girl (Grace) and husband (Charles-Edouard) have a nice home there, often attend balls and play with their dear "blessing" of a son, Sigisimond (Sigi). Then Grace, relizes that Charles-Edouard is a incredible flirt, witch women from all over France! Drinks tea with the same lady every day, goes on long walks and spends balls with the pretty young Juliette Novembre. In this hilarious and well written novel, Mitford unwinds a relaxing, funny, and curious story. What will happen, when Grace discovers an awful secret and fleds back to England with SIgi? Witty, witty, writing.