rachbreads 's review for:

The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford

4.5

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"It’s rather sad,” she said one day, “to belong, as we do, to a lost generation. I’m sure in history the two wars will count as one war and that we shall be squashed out of it altogether, and people will forget that we ever existed. We might just as well never have lived at all, I do think it’s a shame."

"I don’t want to be a literary curiosity,” said Linda. “I should like to have been a living part of a really great generation. I think it’s too dismal to have been born in 1911."

This book was such a delightful surprise. I thought the writing was stellar--clever and funny and heartfelt and true. Mitford created such interesting characters who were caricatures and stereotypes but they were somehow still lovable and had the capacity to surprise you. I thought the choice to make Linda the protagonist in the story but have it narrated by her cousin Fanny was an interesting perspective and added something special instead of having an objective narrator or writing it in first person from Linda's POV. As a final note on the writing, it was absolutely hilarious in the most British way possible, and any book that makes me laugh so hard I have to put down my kindle is a winner.

I’m always saying to Christian how much I wish his buddies would either brighten up their parties a bit or else stop giving them, because I don’t see the point of sad parties, do you? And Left-wing people are always sad because they mind dreadfully about their causes, and the causes are always going so badly.

Besides just being a good book, I think this book is really interesting for cultural reasons, reflected in the quotes opening this review. It was fascinating to read about, as Linda says in her own self-centered way, essentially a lost generation of people growing up between the two World Wars. It was also a fascinating (satirical) look at the changing ways of the aristocracy in early 20th-century England, and how they gradually became more and more irrelevant, especially as their children (like Linda and Jassy and Matt) became modernized and broke with their parent's traditions.