Customer Reviews

The Pursuit of Love (Vintage)

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It's hard for me to imagine a reader NOT liking, much less not adoring, Nancy Mitford's two great novels, The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate. I usually read non-fiction, and come to most novels warily as I've been too-often disappointed in what turned out to be trite, dull or just relentlessly unengaging. From the first chapter I was hooked on Mitford, and I've become a fervent evangelist ever since. Her prose is fantastic, her characters really come to life (Uncle Matthew is a favorite), and the subtle humor is, well, delightful seems the best word, in that her take on life seems full of delight -- at human foibles, goodness and ridiculousness. I loved this book, and loved Love in a Cold Climate as much if not more.

Anyway, the book is, and is likely to remain, one of my favorite novels of all time. I sorely wish I'd read it as a young woman; I think my life might actually have gone differently, that's how inspired I am by Ms. Mitford's perspective and the Zeitgeist she describes.

Nancy Mitford was a bright literary light who came of age between the two World Wars. Her large and wildly eccentric family has been renamed the Radletts and is the foundation for this opening installment of a trilogy dealing with an English family on the brink of WWII.

The narrator is Fanny, a niece abandoned by her fun-loving parents who had no desire to be bound by a child. Her mother, always referred to as The Bolter, makes rare appearances in Fanny's life and none so significant as when she delivers the final line of this novel, one of the best I can recall to close out a tale.

The characters and the story are seen through Fanny's eyes and she recounts their trials and tribulations with a frank and conversational tone that puts you firmly at home at Alconleigh, their cold and sparsely decorated ancestral home. Most notable amongst the characters is Linda, who flits from man to man in a self-centered and very worldly lifestyle that is both repelling and at the same time completely captivating. The terrifying Uncle Matthew is also notable for his harsh punishments and hatred of foreigners, but who suffers from a soft spot when it comes to his family and his beloved England.

Beautifully drawn characters, exquisite writing, and hysterically funny scenes make this a gem of a novel that has withstood the test of time since its 1945 publication.

"The Pursuit of Love," is among the most popular novels written by blue-blooded British author Nancy Mitford who was very popular in the earlier twentieth century. If you consider 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 Devonshire. 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 influential 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 slender novels, only novella length really, 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. PURSUIT follows the romantic fortunes of one Linda Radlett. The action is narrated by a cousin Fanny, who stays with them at Alconleigh, their Gloucester estate. Fanny seems to resemble Nancy Mitford a bit. But the heroine, Linda, the most beautiful and wayward daughter, who surely resembles Nancy quite a bit, gets most of the action. She falls first for a self-satisfied Conservative politician, then for a fire-breathing Communist, and finally for handsome Fabrice, a French duke. In fact our heroine Linda seems to have pursued love in most of the same places Nancy, her creator did, though she well 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.

One of Nancy Mitford's most beloved novels, PURSUIT can certainly be characterized as chick lit, still it is a sparkling romantic comedy, bright and charming that vividly evokes the lost glamor of aristocratic life in England between the wars. It seems to pick up right where TV's Upstairs, Downstairs: The Complete Series - 40th Anniversary Collection left off. Not to mention Evelyn Waugh's Vile Bodies: Bright Young Things (A CSA Word Classic), and Brideshead Revisited. Trust me, if you liked them, you'll love this.

The Mitford sisters were 'fantastical' characters. Nancy Mitford, the eldest, was a prolific author of an interesting genre and time in Britain. "Wigs on the Green" was not so much to my liking due to its Nazi and Hitler connections. But "The Pursuit of Love" and also "Love in a Cold Climate" were lovely and turned me on to the Mitford novels.

I also recommend the recently published memoir by Deborah, Duchess of Devonshire, the youngest Mitford sister.

This book follows the daughters of a quirky family during the WWII era (written in the same timeframe), and it is magnificent. Delves into the themes of how incredibly naive we ladies can be when we embark on the grand journey of love. What's more central to being human than the search for love? Nothing, that's what. This book seems light, but that's a deception that mirrors the game we play in our heads when we say things like, "it's just a date." Ha.

The Mitford Sisters were very prolific writers of the thirties and forties, but nearly forgotten now. Their books and letters tell us a great deal about how women lived their lives before WW2 changed every thing.

While this book is better written in terms of vocabulary and turn of phrase than most modern "chic lit," it's one of the most boring books I've ever read. Way too much exposition for modern tastes, half the characters are flat as if the author didn't have enough imagination to create too many, and none of them are drawn in a compelling manner. I care for none of them.