LOVE IN A COLD CLIMATE [Paperback]

NANCY MITFORD (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: HarperCollins (1993)
• ASIN: B000O8KFMQ
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Lady Montdore finally finds the daughter she never had., September 15, 2006

By 

Paul Scott (Texas) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Love in a Cold Climate (Paperback)

This is a fun, interesting novel that is not for anyone who does not love irony. It is perhaps best appreciated by people who may like Waugh (I think they were friends). Possibly if anyone likes Jan Austen, this novel will please you as well. The similarities to Austen are only in the stucture of certain scenes, and the happy, silliness of the plot wonderfully subverts Jane Austen. Its a really sad and comic look at love and women. It is perhaps mostly about the changing times for women of a particular class. The only reason I do not give it five stars is that I feel it ends too abruptly. But the last scene is magnificent. Look for the paralels between it and the last scenes of sense and sensibility. Its great!

This book is not for the girly, sentimental novel reading sort unless you have a good sense of humor.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Kindle Bonus, March 12, 2010

By 

Carbonbased "Carbonbased" (Pacific NW) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Love in a Cold Climate (Kindle Edition)

The Kindle edition by Penguin Classics (ASIN: B002RI9YOQ) also contains the novels "The Pursuit of Love" and "The Blessing"

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A modern classic, June 29, 2010

By 

I. Sondel "I. Sondel - lover of the arts" (Tallahassee, FL United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Love in a Cold Climate (Paperback)

On August 10th Vintage will reissue several classic novels by Nancy Mitford, including Love in a Cold Climate. Mitford was perhaps the brightest of the "Bright Young Things" immortalized in the fiction of Evelyn Waugh.

Originally published in 1949, Love in a Cold Climate is a comedy of manners that revolves around the naughty Polly Montdore, whose scandalous marriage left her disinherited, and her Canadian cousin Cedric Hampton, the heir apparent.

The action of both this and its prequel, The Pursuit of Love, run concurrently, taking place between the wars, with everyone's favorite cousin, Fanny Wincham, serving as impartial narrator.

Aside from an engaging storyline, tart wit and charming prose style, Love in a Cold Climate is of particular relevance to gay readers for the no nonsense presentation of the flamboyantly aesthetic Cedric, who is thoroughly and unrepentantly gay. He is a rather heroic character (not at all tragic like poor Sebastian Flyte from Brideshead Revisited and so many other gays of pre-Stonewall literature), possessed of great personal magnetism and self-esteem; and though his open homosexuality alternately shocks and delights society, he ultimately proves a great catalyst for happiness and reconciliation in the lives of those closest to him.