Customer Reviews

The Pursuit of Love

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The Pursuit of Love is the 1st in the trilogy written by Nancy Mitford (the 2nd being Love in a Cold Climate and the 3rd Don't Tell Alfred).

Though Love in a Cold Climate is more famous and well-known, I think The Pursuit of Love is the best of the two novels. I found The Pursuit of Love extremely witty, very entertaining and roaring of laughter-funny. It very quickly became one of my favourite novels due to Nancy Mitford's very unique writing style and her exteremly lovable peculiar characters.

I especially loved the first half, when they were children, the picture Nancy Mitford drew of their growing up at Alconleigh with Uncle Matthew's booming voice, always hollering, with Linda's romantic fantasies and crying depression (her suicide attempt after her dog died, I know it should be sad, but that was one part I roared with laughter, it sounded so melodramatic coming from a child of 6 years or so :-D), so that part was such a hilarious, sarcasticly funny in a very realistic and English way.

Then when they were adults and lived their lives with their own husbands, families it became more of a drama, but Linda's character was very entertaining. She is like a butterfly flying from one flower to the other, always seeking the sun(=happily ever after love). She lived in a completely parallel, fantasy world of her own, she was as if she did not have one foot on the ground, head in the clouds, she was as far from reality as one could be.

Then the end.. great end. It suited the book, and left me with a lingering feeling.

Nancy Mitford's writing style is very unique and highly enjoyable. Her dry wit and sarcastic humour reminded me sometimes of Jane Austen, the way she made fun of some of her ridiculous characters (Mrs. Elton in Emma, Mr. Collins or Lady Catherine de Bourgh in Pride and Prejudice).

This was a brilliant book! Loved it, it had an interesting tone and was highly enjoyable, definitely recommend it! But don't expect some big romance novel, don't let the title fool you in that way. This is more a bittersweet, humourous and yet dramatic novel. But an amazing one!

The character Linda, to some women perhaps, the role model of all time, is the centrepiece of this novel, or at least, to my mind, the most memorable. Born and bred to be feminine, to be desirable, to primp and preen for the pleasure of the opposite sex, to spend her waking hours either shopping, or, weather permitting (the companion novel is entitled "Love in a Cold Climate") sun baking on the balcony of the luxury apartment provided by her lover, she is a delightful but empty headed woman who would irritate Jane Austen immensely let alone a 20th century feminist. In some ways though, she represents the child in many of us, who would LIKE to be pampered and adored but know all too well there are definite limits to the pleasure to be derived therefrom - one has to be born and bred to it, like LInda. The novel notes at one point that pre WW2 is not so much a time of fin de siecle but more a fin de vie. The novel is witty, well written and has a charm that smacks of noblesse oblige, but also has some witty observations that may herald wider truths - at one point Linda is a sales person in a Socialist Bookshop and during the absence of the comrade manager, substitutes at the front of the store for the volume WHITHER BRITISH AIRWAYS the volume ROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS; and for the volume KARL MARX: THE FORMATIVE YEARS the volume THE MAKING OF A MARCHIONESS. "Instead of showing, week by week, an enormous loss, to be refunded from one could guess where, it now became the only Red bookshop in England to make a profit. ...the comrades all said that Linda was a good girl and a credit to the party." p. 115. Her presence in that position was through her having "fallen for" and married an "intellectual" and political activist, Christian. Linda also noted that her husband's comrades were not very understanding of maids and servants generally. The poignancy of the novel resides in the saying that those who don't change wither and die and such has been the fate of the landed gentry of England, with their "way of life" good and bad, passing on. THE PURSUIT OF LOVE may not be THE CHERRY ORCHARD but it is a good read.