Customer Reviews

The Pursuit of Love & Love in a Cold Climate: Two Novels

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For anyone sick of the ramifications of political correctness, Mitford's books are the antidote. Moreover, they give good reason as to how we came to need the concept. These slices of aristocratic, self assured, lunacy have made me laugh so hard and loud that my family came to check on me, certain that I'd gone mad. It is hard for me to imagine that they would not affect everyone that way, but having followed what others considered their favorite humor, I no longer assume that mine is the universal touchstone.

The attitude of racial and class determination, is no where more honestly expressed than in this semi autobiographical two novel collection. The wife of a very dull former secretary to India put it well,"I think I may say we put India on the map. Hardly any of one's friends in England had even heard of India before we went there, you know." If you don't find that funny, you probably won't enjoy the book, which is very sad, because if it works, it's an absurdist's dream come true.

This pair of novels certainly don't exude coldness, in any way. They represent the 'autobiographical' novels of Nancy Mitford, and she spins her tales in a very warm and hysterically funny manner, demonstrating her unique skills as a novelist in a period when men tended to dominate the best-sellers lists. A contemporary of writers such as Waugh, Huxley, Greene, and other important names in the 'canon' of twentieth-century literature, Mitford's novels are far too often neglected. Which is a shame, as her richly coloured fictional tapestries reveal a great deal about the lives of the upper-classes, and from a genuinely humourous standpoint.

These novels will be enjoyed by readers who like the light social novels of Wodehouse, and more importantly, those of Evelyn Waugh. Waugh and Mitford were very close friends, and in his later years, Mitford was Waugh's primary object of correspondance, and their letters have since been collected and compiled in a single edition. Waugh's influence on Mitford is obvious - as her work is indeed in the same satiric vein as much of his - but less obvious and more intriguing is her influence on his work. Mitford's sharpness and quickness rival that of Waugh, and in these novels she almost outshines him, in the warmth and jollity of her satire.

Linda, the main character of The Pursuit Of Love, muses when she hears at long last from her lover, "Life...is sometimes sad and often dull, but there are currants in the cake and here is one of them." She might have been talking about this book. In contrast, these novels are rarely sad and never dull and are generously fruited with some delightfully comic moments.

A literary masterpiece? Not really. No great ideas are discussed, no dramatic themes explored. But for those who appreciate Wodehouse and Waugh, there is much here to enjoy.

I'm not sure why I avoided reading Mitford all these years - she is definitely one of the heirs to Jane Austen's crown - Mitford's writing is plain laugh-out-loud funny.

In "Pursuit of Love' we are introduced to the narrator of the book - Fanny whose mother, the bolter, has deserted her and she is bought up by her aunts - one of whom Aunt Sadie has a family of 7 children and a husband - all of whom display varying degrees of genteel eccentricity. Uncle Matthew hunts his children across the countryside when there are no foxes to be found. There is also the revered placing of the entrenching-tool in a prominent place in the house - Uncle Matthew used this rather obscure instrument to dispatch 8 Germans in the Great War and it is given a great deal more respect now than an entrenching tool might otherwise expect. But this story is mostly about the immensely charming but languid Linda - closest in age to Fanny and pathologically incapable of doing anything useful from tying her own stock to making her own bed. Her marriages seem to reflect the tenor of the times - from first falling for and marrying the wealthy but relentlessy middle-class (and therefore dull) Tony. Escaping him she is dragged into the meaningful world of born-again communism by Christian - another child of the upper-classes. Finally she meets Fabrice - Frenchman and Resistance Fighter in the second world war.

This book is set in the 1930's and early 40's and is a wonderful commentary on class at the time. It is said that it is in some ways autobiographical, and from what little I have heard of Nancy Mitford's life I can well believe it. It is so light, enjoyable and wonderfully wicked - one of the few novels where I actually laughed out-loud. It is written with a light-hand, and such benevolent eccentricity. A book to be thoroughly enjoyed.

These are 2 delightful satires on the social life of the well-to-do English of the '30s and '40s. In PURSUIT Linda Radlett, brightest star in an unconventional upper class British family (based upon the author's own family), is hardly an admirable person. She is capable of saying cattily about her sister's older fiance, "Poor old thing, I suppose she likes him, but, I must say, if he was one's dog, one would have him put down." And she callously remarks about her own unloved baby, who is wailing, "Poor soul, I think it must have caught sight of itself in the glass."And yet she is a fascinating creature who somehow retains the reader's sympathy as she endures marriage to the ambitious scion of a dull banking family, struggles to adapt to life with a zealous communist lover, and at last finds true love with a worldly Frenchman, just as World War 2 is closing in upon them.Nancy Mitford's witty style captures perfectly the ambience of English social life during the '30s and into the early war years. However, the sharp, brittle satire does not disguise the author's affection for her family of fallible characters.In COLD CLIMATE Polly Hampton is a hypnotizingly beautiful woman, but to the dismay of her parents, she shows no interest in love or marriage--until she suddenly overwhelms a very recently widowed older kinsman (who is rumored to have been a lover of her own mother). Her parents, alienated from their only child by this unsuitable match, are now ready to meet their nearest male heir, Cedric Hampton (lately of Nova Scotia, now of Paris), who turns out to be a very handsome, but obviously gay, charmer, who transforms their lives. When a disillusioned Polly returns to England with her unhappy husband, an unusual, but not totally surprising, triangle ensues.Mitford's satiric skills are at their best in this sparkling novel. Especially effective are the characterizations of the blunt, self-centered Lady Montdore (Polly's mother), and the effeminate aesthete, Cedric. Lady Montdore's comforting words at the death of Polly's newborn baby: "I expect it was just as well. Children are such an awful expense nowadays." Such is the lady's habitual behavior, her daughter seems unmoved and hardly surprised at this remark. Narrator Fanny Logan Wincham and the Radlett family, from the earlier novel, also play an important part here.

I have read this book so many times that (unfortunately) I've practically memorized it.

A previous reviewer notes that Mitford's works are "long on character, short on plot." I agree, and this aspect of her writing made it hard for me to get through this book on the first round. However, once you accept the fact that the plot is not the point, it doesn't really matter. I have re-read this book to tatters, not to (obviously) find out what happens, but to enjoy the atmosphere, characters, and dialogue.

If you're someone who never re-reads books (what's the point when I already know what's going to happen?), you probably shouldn't bother with this one. Otherwise, dig in, but be warned that you could be at risk of becoming a serious Mitfordaholic.

It is a shame that Nancy Mitford does not currently have the same fame that Dorothy Parker has. Both women, after all, were incredible satirists, who scrutinized their respective societies and wrote about their best and worst qualities with both scorn and affection, as well as with a good dose of humour. I have read a few of Nancy Mitford's correspondence and I have to urge people who like her work to read them. They are hilarious, very cutting, and at the same time, sympathetic -- imagine Fanny at a dinner party, wearing bunchy tweed herself, but casting a critical eye at everyone else's clothing. If Ms. Mitford had only paid a little more attention to the structure of her novels, I personally believe that she would have surpassed P.G. Wodehouse and F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Witty and eccentric Nancy Mitford's fame ought not to obscure these delightful novels.
These novels--best sellers in their day and recently televised--are narrated by Fanny, a cousin to Pursuit's Linda and second-cousin to Climate's Polly. Fanny is matter-of-fact, intelligent, and observant: she spends much of her time with each as she grows up, allowing Mitford a delightful opportunity to write from an insider/outsider perspetive that other authros must envy. Not only does Fanny look back at youth and young adulthood with an adult's perspective, but she is also living a very different life herself. She isn't beautiful--her thick dark hair grows upwards like heather--and she completes her period as a debutant by marrying a young Oxford don. As Fanny raises her family, Linda and Polly (and so many other delightful personages--Cedric, Uncle Davy, the Bolter, Uncle Matthew, and so forth) whirl past on their hilarious, doomed pursuits of perfect love, health, or happiness. Perhaps Fanny is rather more amused by the foibles of her friends and relations than kindness dictates. Lucky us.
Fanny is also the heroine of Don't Tell Alfred, a poorly titled novel that is as deliciously wickedly delightful as Mitford's earlier work.
Mitford and Waugh deserve to be compared, as they carried on a voluminous, life long (published) correpondence(Both were so unpleasant that they got along beautifully).

England between first and second world wars: few girls were as famous as the Mitfords, five beautiful daughters of a well-known upper class "county family" as the British would call them. Nancy, writer of the family, knew her debutante balls well. In fact, she later came up with a way to define English social class by defining speech as "U"for upper class; and "non-U" for those who weren't.

The Mitford girls were "brought up to marry,not fall in love,"Nancy once wrote. Unfortunately, of the actual Mitford girls, only one did as she was expected to do. Deborah (Debo) married the eleventh Duke of Devonsheer. Unity, however, hung around Germany, striking up warmer friendships with the Nazis, and expressing herself more forcefully in their support, than suited the British public. Diana went and married Sir Oswald Mosley, leader of the British fascists, who was "detained" for WWII. Jessica ran off to Hollywood, no less, took American citizenship, and wrote the whistle-blowing "The American Way of Death,"a very inflential indictment of the funeral business. Nancy did marry an "Honorable," but then she turned around and published "The Pursuit of Love," and "Love in a Cold Climate,"two novels that pretty well blew the whistle on society, and on the Mitfords.

For everyone agrees that the central family of these novels, the Radletts, are the Mitfords to the life. Eccentric, choleric father; vague amiable mother; clamorous, animal-loving, quicksilver charming children. The action is narrated by a cousin who seems to resemble Nancy Mitford, and she seems to get most of the action too. As heroine of "In Pursuit of Love" she seems to have pursued love in most of the same places her creator did, though she knew what was expected of her.

How could she not? At one point, a powerful peeress advises Fanny, the narrator,"'Don't you go marrying anybody, for love. Remember that love cannot last; it never, never does; but if you marry all this it's for your life. One day, don't forget,you'll be middle-aged and think what that must be like for a woman who can't have, say, a pair of diamond earrings. A woman of my age needs diamonds near her face, to give a sparkle. Then at mealtimes, sitting with all the unimportant people for ever and ever. And no car. Not a very nice prospect,you know.'"

But Fanny, our narrator, hardly seems to need warning. She remarks at one point,"'always be civil to the girls, you never know who they may marry,'" is an aphorism which has saved many an English spinster from being treated like an Indian widow.'"

On a deeper level, however, Fanny seems to reflect her creator's ambivalence on whether to marry for love, or "all this." But there's still substantial ambivalence on that question.

These novels are undeniably bright and charming, and they seem to pick up right where tv's "Upstairs Downstairs" left off. Not to mention Evelyn Waugh's "Bright Young Things,"and "Brideshead revisited". If you liked them, you'll love this.

This combined edition of The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate are Nancy Mitford at the top of her form. Mitford was the eldest daughter of Lord and Lady Redesdale, British aristocrats whose ancestry stretched to the Middle Ages and beyond and whose relatives included Winston Churchill. Mitford began writing in the early 1930s, but her early works are, while amusing, trivial and dated. The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate were produced in the late 1940s, after Mitford had made a loveless marriage and begun a long, frustrating love affair with a Frenchman. These adversities sharpened her insights and her pen, so that the two novels are as pleasing today as when they were first published.

The Pursuit of Love introduces us to the Radlett family, the children of Lord and Lady Alconleigh (thinly disguised and exaggerated versions of Lord and Lady Redesdale). The heroine is Linda, a romantic and lovely girl who dreams of perfect love. She marries a dull young man, leaves him for a handsome zealot who has no time for her, and finally finds love (and tragedy) with an urbane Frenchman. This is obviously a semi-autobiographical sketch of Nancy Mitford's own early years. The other Radletts are composites and exagerrations of Nancy's own sisters and friends.

Love in a Cold Climate focuses on the viccisitudes of Polly Hampton, a neighbor of the Alconleighs who has similar troubles in love. It features a couple of obviously gay characters (which must have been pretty controversial in the 1940s)and continue's Mitford's theme of the search for love.

Both novels are narrated by the Radlett's cousin Fanny Logan, whose own placid life and happy marriage make nice contrasts to all the troubles she sees going on around her. The writing is sparkling and bright but not shallow, and while both novels have somewhat sad endings (Pursuit more so than Cold Climate), you will enjoy and want to reread them many times.