The Pursuit of Love

My first Nancy Mitford read was Love in a Cold Climate and while I could recognise the talent in the writing, and enjoy the humor, I failed to see anything significant or profound in the story. That means this, my only other Mitford book, languished on the TBR for years. I finally picked it up a couple of days ago. It is a significantly better book, in my opinion.

Told in third person by a narrator that is the niece/cousin of the Radlett family, it chronicles the life of one of the Radlett daughters, second-oldest of 7 (I think), Linda. Linda is a delicate natured, highly emotional child who loves animals, in a family that is hilariously savage, headed by a father that is the very stereotype of landed gentry. As a teen she becomes show more highly romantic and impatient for her Grand True Love. Most importantly to her future, she is undereducated and naive, but kind, charming and pleasant.

Of the two books, this one is the most realistic; Linda is just as likely a character today as she was almost 100 years ago. I didn't read reviews of it before beginning it, but when searching for a synopsis I glanced over several that read of the tragic undercurrent of this book. On the face of it, I see why people claim this, but really, I can't see it. Linda herself would not see her life as tragic, and I"m not at all sure Fanny (the narrator) sees it either. Linda's life was not blameless, but Linda herself never thought it was, and undereducated or not, she owned her mistakes and would repeat them all given a choice, in the end. I admired her for that.

I could talk forever about this book, but I'll just wrap up with a note about the introduction to my edition, written by Hugo Vickers. In it he states that it is widely believed that this book is largely autobiographical, with Fanny, the narrator, being Mitford. I know nothing about Nancy Mitford save what he himself wrote in a quick biographical sketch, but based on this, I don't see it; she appears to have lived much more of Linda's life than the solid, quiet life of Fanny. Perhaps Mitford, as Fanny, was playing the omniscient observer of her own history, adding the ending she'd have preferred, over the one she ultimately got. I suppose that's what Vickers meant, but if it was, he didn't make that clear.

By far my favorite of the two books, this is engaging writing, amusing reading, and offers readers a depth of insight that will stay with them without weighing them down. show less

this is a load of fun, but retains enough spikiness to not be cosy or predictable.
It is narrated by Fanny, a cousin of the Radletts, a large family of children who Aunt Sadie & Uncle Matthew produced and don't quite seem to know what to do with. Fanny gets deposited in the family for the holidays, and so we see the family through her eyes. The story focusses on Linda, the second daughter and closes in age to Fanny. They come out together and while Fanny finds a steady husband, Linda's love affairs follow a rather more tortuous path, the course of true love never did run smooth.
It's all very upper class, but the author has wit enough to see that and is spiky enough to skewer the idea that this is a story of privilege. It is funny, in a show more sly way, and touching by turns. The ending caught me completely by surprise. show less

Nancy Mitford's semi-autobiographical Pursuit of Love is an interesting book, a kind of upper-class British farce with a streak of melancholia and shrewdness running underneath.

The Radletts are unconventional, even by the standards of literary interwar British aristocracy. Linda and cousin Fanny spend their days dreaming of falling in love whilst Lord Radlett literally hunts them across the properties. As the years tick by, narrator Fanny loses her childish dreams, but Linda pursues them with a frenzy.

I enjoyed this book. Fanny is an affectionate, yet discerning narrator - easily able to see the foibles in her family and just easily love them. This is not exactly a light comedy a la Heyer or Wodehouse - though it shares much of their show more arch tone. Nor is it Brideshead Revisited or similar deconstructions. In truth, it's a combination of the two, and it reminded me more than anything of Trollope in some ways - though it's much breezier and forthrightly humorous.

The book also covers a long period of time, beginning shortly after the end of WWI, and finishing around WWII's conclusion. Again, this passage of years is unusual for a comedic British novel, and it did lend the book a somewhat bittersweet edge. Underpinning Linda's romantic shenanigans is a story of frustration, disappointment, and in many ways ill-treatment. This - and Fanny's sideways acknowledgements of it - give the book a dissonant tone. It's not a bad thing, but it definitely breaks the novel out of genre, I feel.

For all this, one thing that's wholly unquestioned is class. Money is no object to the Radletts in the sense that it's not something to even be considered, ever - and the wads of cash financing their many adventures is never really considered nor commented on, but rather viewed as a natural state. It's an interesting ellipsis in an otherwise sharp-eyed book.

The Pursuit of Love is decidedly a pursuit - it's a fast-paced novel that gets through a hell of a lot in its 200-odd pages. With such slender demands on a reader, there's certainly enough here to justify a read. show less

I pulled this off the shelf to re-read because I needed something to get the 'romance' square on my book bingo board. There are love stories here, but it's not a romance in either the 2020s sense or the Anthony Trollope sense. There's no wooing, no will-they won't-they, no chase and be chased.
But then the title is The Pursuit of Love, not The Pursuit of Romance.
The characters who find it the easiest are mostly in the background.
In the foreground are Fanny's mother, "the Bolter", who left her husband and Fanny as soon as she could, and Linda, who left her husband and daughter as soon as she could. Mostly Linda. Who after leaving her "traditional life" husband, falls for a Communist, then leaves him when he cheats on her, and falls hard show more for Frenchman Fabrice, who scoops her up at a Paris train station, where Linda is stranded. I guess all her running did lead to love in the end, both on her part and, surprisingly, on his. Then the Nazis invade France.
I want unexpected and quirky details in novels, and liked the amount I got. Like the girl whose dream always was to raise a baby badger. And the gentleman who proposed to his wife by the cage of a two-headed nightingale at the White City.
And I also got the humor I like to have, even in a "serious" novel. Like:
Being a Conservative is much more restful ..., though one must remember that it is bad, not good. But it does take place during certain hours, and then finishes, whereas Communism seems to eat up all one's life and energy.
And: "I think housework is far more tiring and frightening than hunting is, no comparison, and yet after hunting, we had eggs for tea and were made to rest for hours, but after housework, people expect one to go on just as if nothing special had happened." She sighed. show less

Really fun read read that turns into a surprisingly moving read. The power and beauty of people being their unapologetic selves. Eccentric, selfish, funny, loving, and all too human. The manner in which the war alters the view is deftly and poignantly handled by Mitford. A smart and funny book that has something to say about our strange species.

"Life is sometimes sad and often dull, but there are currents in the cake, and here is one of them."

'The Pursuit of Love' is an over-the-top tale of the love affairs and the lives of an aristocratic family, the Radletts', and is a satire of Mitford’s own family, who were well-known eccentrics in their own right.

“Always either on a peak of happiness or drowning in black waters of despair they loved or they loathed, they lived in a world of superlatives.”

The story follows Linda, one of the five Radlett children, and her pursuit of love. It begins with her as a young girl innocently yearning for it, and ends with a her as a middle-aged woman who after two disastrous marriages is pregnant by a French philanderer, and is narrated by show more her cousin.

Perhaps because of the era, it reminded me of 'Brideshead Revisited' but with less gloom and more humour. It pokes fun at a class who were already losing their relevance in an increasingly 'capitalist' world of but had simply failed to notice it.

Some of the characters are bizzarre and amusing. In particular I enjoyed Linda’s bombastic, xenophobic father and the narrator's own hypochondriac step-father, who both made me smile.

Overall I found this an entertaining if light read. I really enjoyed some of the reflections on the years between the two World Wars but as much of the satire is aimed at Mitford's own family, who are no longer as notorious as they were when this was published, I felt that some of the humour passed me by. I would suggest doing some background reading in to the author's family beforehand. I certainly feel that it would have helped me. show less

I wasn't sure about this at first. It took a while to get going. I found the characters too superficial and frivolous until Linda heads for France and is transformed. Then the superficiality made sense as context for such an alteration. I ended the book loving Linda. I enjoyed the way Mitford brought to life Linda's reluctant capitulation to love, and the way she becomes more solid as a result. The backdrop of the Spanish Civil War and the Second World War provide a striking relief to the intensity of Linda's personal experiences.