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ejl2623's review against another edition
3.0
This is a Review of all three novels in this three book series. I read them all on audible. The narrators for Books 1 and 3 were great. Book 2 kind of whispered the entire novel. I hated that.
Book 1
The Pursuit of Love (1945): Nancy Mitford is a witty writer, capturing a wildly unique family in the period between the world wars. Fanny Logan, our narrator is being raised by her Aunt Emily and Uncle Davy as her mother, a/k/a "the bolter" quickly decided she was not fit for the maternal life and her father certainly didn't wish to raise her alone. Her cousins often end up nearby with her Aunt Amelia and Uncle Mathew, so she spends a good deal of time with her cousin, Linda Radlett with her several siblings. Linda and Fanny are close. This is her story, as, during her year of coming out, she marries poorly - a German banker's son who is handsome but ill-suited to his nonconformist wife. She has the requisite child, a daughter she cares nothing about. She is a great social success and he hates socializing. This novel is so old that I will mention that we follow Linda through an affair and marriage to a communist who never seems to feel any attachment to his various lovers and then she heads to France as WWII has begun and France is soon to be invaded. She meets and finally falls in love with Fabrice, a French Duke. He has been engaged many times and is known as a love 'em and leave 'em type. Nancy Mitford was involved with a similarly fickle Frenchman off and on for years. Linda and Fabrice have a different end. She dies in childbirth of his son and he dies in the war as a resistance fighter in France. By this time, Fanny has married Alfred, a Don at Oxford. They adopt baby Fabrice and the story of Linda draws to a close. Very sad, but the book in general makes one smile and laugh at the goings on of the wealthy aristocracy and the manners of the age.
Book 2 -
Love in a Cold Climate (1949): Looking to a much wealthier and proper yet also dysfunctional family, Fanny's childhood friend returns home from years in India where her father, the Earl of Montdore served as Viceroy.. Her mother desperately wants Polly to marry and based on beauty and prospects, she would be an amazing catch, but she has eyes for nobody. Until her father's sister dies, freeing up her husband, "Boy" Duckworth. Boy has been lecherous with underaged girls, is known for his many affairs and was for a long time, lover to Polly's mother. And that is who Polly loves. In a disastrous turn of affairs, Polly is disinherited and everyone is miserable. Ultimately, Cedric, the heir apparent from Canada, is brought to the family estate where he takes on the formidable Sonia, Polly's mother. A flamboyantly gay man, in this novel, Cedric is a hoot, a complex guy who has a vast knowledge of antiquities and little formal education.
Throughout, we also get to watch Fanny as a young mother, giving hysterical views of the mundane wives of her husband's colleagues and her sad commentary that these scholars never actually speak about their subjects with women present. There are a number of funny collateral stories in Love an a Cold Climate, again highlighting Mitford's wit and frightening insight into the minds and ways of the whole strata of society.
Book 3
Don't Tell Alfred (1960) - This story, many years after the first two, takes Fanny to France, when her husband Alfred is named Ambassador to France. It is the most uneven of the three books but has enough going for it to round out the trilogy. Fanny's social secretary was not her first pick among her sister's children. Northy joins them and kind of learns the job, as she also borrows money against her salary from everyone in the embassy and rescues all sorts of animals, meant to live on embassy grounds -- in Paris. Her oldest son has become a zen buddhist and plans to walk to China with his very pregnant wife and their adopted Asian son; the next one down is working in London were he ends up helping out the two youngest and their close friend who have scarpered, with a friend, from Eton and found jobs packing razors. Meanwhile, the predecessor ambassador's wife has taken residence in an embassy apartment and refuses to leave. She entertains friends and has food brought in. As Fanny desperately tries to find her place in embassy life, the family is the constant target of a British newspaper. This slapstick novel works best when it focuses on the fact it takes place in the very late 1950s. Some of the humor still made me smile. But largely, I'm mostly glad I read the third book in the trilogy.
Book 1
The Pursuit of Love (1945): Nancy Mitford is a witty writer, capturing a wildly unique family in the period between the world wars. Fanny Logan, our narrator is being raised by her Aunt Emily and Uncle Davy as her mother, a/k/a "the bolter" quickly decided she was not fit for the maternal life and her father certainly didn't wish to raise her alone. Her cousins often end up nearby with her Aunt Amelia and Uncle Mathew, so she spends a good deal of time with her cousin, Linda Radlett with her several siblings. Linda and Fanny are close. This is her story, as, during her year of coming out, she marries poorly - a German banker's son who is handsome but ill-suited to his nonconformist wife. She has the requisite child, a daughter she cares nothing about. She is a great social success and he hates socializing. This novel is so old that I will mention that we follow Linda through an affair and marriage to a communist who never seems to feel any attachment to his various lovers and then she heads to France as WWII has begun and France is soon to be invaded. She meets and finally falls in love with Fabrice, a French Duke. He has been engaged many times and is known as a love 'em and leave 'em type. Nancy Mitford was involved with a similarly fickle Frenchman off and on for years. Linda and Fabrice have a different end. She dies in childbirth of his son and he dies in the war as a resistance fighter in France. By this time, Fanny has married Alfred, a Don at Oxford. They adopt baby Fabrice and the story of Linda draws to a close. Very sad, but the book in general makes one smile and laugh at the goings on of the wealthy aristocracy and the manners of the age.
Book 2 -
Love in a Cold Climate (1949): Looking to a much wealthier and proper yet also dysfunctional family, Fanny's childhood friend returns home from years in India where her father, the Earl of Montdore served as Viceroy.. Her mother desperately wants Polly to marry and based on beauty and prospects, she would be an amazing catch, but she has eyes for nobody. Until her father's sister dies, freeing up her husband, "Boy" Duckworth. Boy has been lecherous with underaged girls, is known for his many affairs and was for a long time, lover to Polly's mother. And that is who Polly loves. In a disastrous turn of affairs, Polly is disinherited and everyone is miserable. Ultimately, Cedric, the heir apparent from Canada, is brought to the family estate where he takes on the formidable Sonia, Polly's mother. A flamboyantly gay man, in this novel, Cedric is a hoot, a complex guy who has a vast knowledge of antiquities and little formal education.
Throughout, we also get to watch Fanny as a young mother, giving hysterical views of the mundane wives of her husband's colleagues and her sad commentary that these scholars never actually speak about their subjects with women present. There are a number of funny collateral stories in Love an a Cold Climate, again highlighting Mitford's wit and frightening insight into the minds and ways of the whole strata of society.
Book 3
Don't Tell Alfred (1960) - This story, many years after the first two, takes Fanny to France, when her husband Alfred is named Ambassador to France. It is the most uneven of the three books but has enough going for it to round out the trilogy. Fanny's social secretary was not her first pick among her sister's children. Northy joins them and kind of learns the job, as she also borrows money against her salary from everyone in the embassy and rescues all sorts of animals, meant to live on embassy grounds -- in Paris. Her oldest son has become a zen buddhist and plans to walk to China with his very pregnant wife and their adopted Asian son; the next one down is working in London were he ends up helping out the two youngest and their close friend who have scarpered, with a friend, from Eton and found jobs packing razors. Meanwhile, the predecessor ambassador's wife has taken residence in an embassy apartment and refuses to leave. She entertains friends and has food brought in. As Fanny desperately tries to find her place in embassy life, the family is the constant target of a British newspaper. This slapstick novel works best when it focuses on the fact it takes place in the very late 1950s. Some of the humor still made me smile. But largely, I'm mostly glad I read the third book in the trilogy.
kab233's review
3.0
A fun read, but mostly only as a sequel to The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate.
louisebels's review against another edition
1.0
There is something about this comic style that I thought I always enjoyed, but am now starting to realise I have wanted to enjoy it but I just don't. It doesn't make me laugh, nothing all that interesting happens and it's really rather dull. Mitford's writing is quite nice though and if I understood half the middle-class lingo she used I might get some of the jokes.
marisolea's review against another edition
3.0
No atino últimamente con los libros. Me ha parecido una tontuna sin más.
mgespi's review against another edition
5.0
36/2022 Qué buena idea tuvimos con este plan de leernos a las Mitford en 2022.
Con este terminamos la trilogía de esta familia, en la que el hilo conductor es Fanny que POR FIN es la protagonista de la historia.
Aquí se nota mucho que Nancy Mitford quería hablar de la vida en París y mira, qué cosas y qué suerte, que de repente nombran a Alfred, el marido de Fanny, embajador en París y para allá que se van.
Es todo tronchante, desde la negativa de la mujer del anterior embajador a marcharse, a la visita de los hijos de Fanny y Alfred. Northey es una especie de Linda, algo descafeinada, pero con esa despreocupación por la vida…
Con este terminamos la trilogía de esta familia, en la que el hilo conductor es Fanny que POR FIN es la protagonista de la historia.
Aquí se nota mucho que Nancy Mitford quería hablar de la vida en París y mira, qué cosas y qué suerte, que de repente nombran a Alfred, el marido de Fanny, embajador en París y para allá que se van.
Es todo tronchante, desde la negativa de la mujer del anterior embajador a marcharse, a la visita de los hijos de Fanny y Alfred. Northey es una especie de Linda, algo descafeinada, pero con esa despreocupación por la vida…
rrose3000's review
Meh. I thought the first of this series--The Pursuit of Love--a nearly perfect novel of its bubbly witty mid-20th century genre, the second--Love in a Cold Climate--silly and oddly structured, but a fun way to revisit characters I like--and this one charming at points but a bit dull and overpopulated with characters I couldn't keep straight and didn't care about. There was also a focus, different from the first two, on satirizing subtle political events and I simply had no idea what was going on. The first two books were written and published in the 1940s and, where they dealt with world events at all, which wasn't a tonne, it was about WWII and it's preceding events and aftermath--even the most ill-informed has a general idea. But Don't Tell Alfred came out in 1960 and is set in the British embassy in Paris and there's a LOT about French-English wheelings and dealings and I didn't care in the slightest. Those bits were boring. There was also a lot of what I guess was satire about how stupid and selfish young people of the era were--the author was 11 years older than in the last book, and it showed darkly. I didn't enjoy those bits either.
Uncle Matthew is as good as ever and the assistant Northey has a few good echoes of Linda in Pursuit of Love but without any depth. This book, in its episodic wackiness and lack of emotional ramification reminded me--unlike the first two--of PG Wodehouse, whom I can only take in small doses.
Uncle Matthew is as good as ever and the assistant Northey has a few good echoes of Linda in Pursuit of Love but without any depth. This book, in its episodic wackiness and lack of emotional ramification reminded me--unlike the first two--of PG Wodehouse, whom I can only take in small doses.
_sarah_s's review against another edition
funny
lighthearted
relaxing
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.25
documentno_is's review against another edition
funny
lighthearted
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.75
This was an interesting one!
I would start with the positive, this novel has an incredible sense of voice. The author really writes our protagonist as the funniest person in the room and that comes across both in the other character's reactions to her but in the word choices as well. Filling her prose with idiom and humor, Mittford has an incredible sense of what people at the time found funny.
The characters are a bit of a mixed bag, some are written complexly and with detail and some just exist to keep the story moving. There is a good deal of social satire in the novel so many of the characters are stand ins for what english people in their 60's thought about one another. Mittford clearly has a good sense of British society and likely took on much of what she knew people found funny.
On the negative side, as with much of British literature this novel is abhorrently racist in ways that are difficult for a modern audience to stomach. They show the state of Britain of the time but unfortunately illuminate much of what is still plaguing society today. I don't necessarily feel Mitford was trying to present this racism as a negative or positive commentary and that's where my problems with it were.
Lastly, it really did sort of fall apart in the middle for a second. Too many characters introduced without enough characterization leaves the audience feeling floundered. Her initially charismatic voice was starting to get lost in the grating minutia of Fanny's french life. Mitford's novel wasn't necessarily a complete disappointment but I'm unsure if the impact of the positives outweighed the heavy pull of the negatives.
I would start with the positive, this novel has an incredible sense of voice. The author really writes our protagonist as the funniest person in the room and that comes across both in the other character's reactions to her but in the word choices as well. Filling her prose with idiom and humor, Mittford has an incredible sense of what people at the time found funny.
The characters are a bit of a mixed bag, some are written complexly and with detail and some just exist to keep the story moving. There is a good deal of social satire in the novel so many of the characters are stand ins for what english people in their 60's thought about one another. Mittford clearly has a good sense of British society and likely took on much of what she knew people found funny.
On the negative side, as with much of British literature this novel is abhorrently racist in ways that are difficult for a modern audience to stomach. They show the state of Britain of the time but unfortunately illuminate much of what is still plaguing society today. I don't necessarily feel Mitford was trying to present this racism as a negative or positive commentary and that's where my problems with it were.
Lastly, it really did sort of fall apart in the middle for a second. Too many characters introduced without enough characterization leaves the audience feeling floundered. Her initially charismatic voice was starting to get lost in the grating minutia of Fanny's french life. Mitford's novel wasn't necessarily a complete disappointment but I'm unsure if the impact of the positives outweighed the heavy pull of the negatives.
georgiadods's review against another edition
funny
lighthearted
relaxing
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0