Like many who have reviewed this book elsewhere, I found it oddly familiar because of how much I've read over the years about the Mitfords (not even the biographies; just the reviews of the biographies). I prefer books set in the last 200 years or so that were written when they were set. Certainly a lot of things go undefined, and you can be brought up short by outdated comments on race etc, but the immersion still feels richer somehow. This is a light read about rather shallow, silly people but most are likable. It's as interesting for 'how they lived then' as for the actual plot. I was surprised to see that Mitford didn't write this until she was about 40, because her portrayal of childhood feels much more real than when the characters grow up. Perhaps children haven't changed as much over the last century as adults have. As I suppose you could expect from the author, the female characters are much more fleshed out than the male, and of those women, the servants have less personality. I kept losing track of one of the brothers completely, and a major male character (Davey, the narrator's stepfather) kept alternating dramatically between obnoxious and wonderful in a way I don't think was deliberate. Linda does have some interesting similarities to Scarlett O'Hara, particularly her relationship to her daughter, but that could just as easily be a coincidence. The ending becomes apparent with a chapter or two to go, but that does work better than telegraphing it much earlier or making it a surprise. The ending is oddly abrupt, without the usual long-term fates of the main characters and a few questions unanswered. Many French phrases go untranslated, but they can be muddled past if you don't feel like rousing yourself to Google them. You'll probably be to cozy to care. ( )

nice reading