The Pursuit of Love - Books (Nancy Mitford, Paperback)

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Customer Reviews of The Pursuit of Love

queenfilo

24th November 2002

Forget Bridget Jones.....Nancy was there first
While our bookstores are still overrun with "girly" bridget jones (I am single and can't find love) like dribble. This is the classic girl book. Set in England in the aristocratic circles the story is about a girl who is indeed in the pursuit of love. For people who have read Hons and Rebels Jessica Mitford's memoir , family life in Nancy's book seems to have a lot in common with the real thing. The pursuit of love is sparkeling ,funny ,sweet and a delight too read. Leave that commercial nonsense at your bookstore and read a classic! Enjoy.

19th February 2001

The perfect read - witty, glamorous, funny, poignant
Not just an evocation of a lost way of life, but of a lost people - not all of them nice people, but all hugely entertaining. Nancy Mitford is one of the most gifted comic novelists ever to put pen to paper and her talent for characterisation is without equal. So funny you'll cry laughing, but sweet and understandable too. Every teenage girl should read this - they'll understand what the girls in the novel are going through. Everyone else should read it anyway, because it's just so fab.

8th February 2000

A family with its lovable but tyrannical paterfamilias
The star of the show is Uncle Matthew, a man totally sure of himself and his place in the world, yet totally without arrogance or pretensions. He rules over the house with a rod of iron while his children and quasi adopted niece, Fanny (see also Don't Tell Alfred and Love in a Cold Climate) continually try the great man's patience. He has a view on everything and will not listen to contray opinions yet is intensely lovable as well. The sadness with which he is described as bring in tears after his only outing to the theatre to see Rome and Juliet is offset by his ludicrous criticisms "why did they have to die, the silly fools?". He mistrusts all foreigners having only ever ventured to France once, that being in 1914 and with purposes other than leisure on his mind. When the Kroesigs descend on his house prior to his daughter's marriage to their eldest, he is beside himself with paranoia as to what dirty tricks they might commit under his roof. When Davey blows the lights on their arrival the scene which ensues is undoubtedly one of the funniest ever written in English. His opinions of the Kroesigs can't possibly fall any lower, they have already disgusted him by their bourgeois manners and discussed such things as books "i don't read" and gardening at the diner table, but the next day he discovers that they eat breakfast in bed. This is the last straw, an affront to a man of action like Uncle Matthew, who rises at 5 and is out checking on his animals. He is rude "it's that hog, Merlin on the phone" he shouts to his wife without any attempt to conceal his contempt for Lord Merlin by covering the mouthpiece. He is a fearful snob "I overheard fanny saying writing paper" he says with withering scorn; education of girls is equally reprehensible, Fanny has been to school but in his eyes its effect is the loss of "every ounce of feminine charm". But he is kind too, showing great love for Fanny in his own way and to his own children too. He is a soft touch and his punishments never come to much, he always relents soon after the imposition of whatever penalty has been deemed necessary. "The thin end of the wedge" is how he puts it, but he can't stay angry for long.

The story is also one of the old order changing. While Uncle Mattehew is set in his ways, refusing even to eat in someone elses' house "why should I? Perfectly good food at home" and his wife, even in the 30's does not think of Surrey as the countryside, the world is changing. While Uncle Mathew goes to the House of Lords and votes whimsically on the issues of the day, his children run off the Spanish Civil War and try to change the world by direct action not aloofness or the use of the hereditary vote. Another daughter runs off to Hollywood and the family photographed in the first scene of the book is dissolved for ever. This is a wonderful book describing the changing social habits of the century, brought to life in the greatest fictional creations.