This is the first novel I have read by Nancy Mitford, and I didn’t know what to expect before I started. I knew that Mitford came from a upper-class family and that her siblings were involved in some scandalous behaviour but that was all. Mitford has written quite a few novels, and I have already embarked upon another. There is also a BBC adaption of The Pursuit of Love which I can safely watch now that I’ve read the book – I hate doing it the other way around!
I found The Pursuit of Love to be full of humour and fun but also very observant, of people and relationships in particular. The novel is narrated by Fanny, although she very much feels like an insignificant character in her own story – choosing a stable, uneventful existence over the glamour and drama of the paths taken by her mother, nicknamed ‘The Bolter’, and her cousin Linda, whose pursuit of love makes up the main narrative of the novel:
“These are the components of marriage, the wholemeal bread of life, rough, ordinary, but sustaining; Linda had been feeding on honeydew, and that is an incomparable diet.”
However, Fanny is perfectly placed to narrate the novel – a member of the Radlett family but removed enough that her yearly visits to Linda’s childhood home throw up endless comedy as she recounts the fierce behaviour of her Uncle Matthew and life at their country house Alconleigh:
“This violent, uncontrolled man, like his children, knew no middle course, he either loved or he hated, and generally, it must be said, he hated.”
Later, the girls grow up and marry, and we continue to hear of what happens to Linda and the other characters from Fanny’s perspective.
The Pursuit of Love is very funny, it reminded me a lot of Evelyn Waugh’s novels (which I love), and I read that Waugh suggested the title for this book. It is set in the time leading up to the second world war, a time which I think is fascinating – full of parties and glamour and excitement to begin with, and then the fear of the war coming and the immense changes which the conflict brought to everyday life.
A Literary Re-Education 