The pursuit of love - Nancy Mitford

pages: 192   published:1945

Linda is one amongst a number of siblings in a larger than life family in England in the early 20th century. This book is the story of her life, and her misfortunes in love.

I read a biography on the Mitford sisters a few years ago, that I found extremely interesting. So when I stumbled upon a reference to one of Nancy Mitford's books a couple of weeks ago, it sparked my interest. I had no idea what to expect, and to be honest I expected it to be hard to read and boring. It was quite the opposite. Very easy read, much more modern than I thought it would be. Wikipedia classifies this book under the genre: Comic Fiction. I would classify tihs as chicklit, but it's not anything like our modern chicklit. I guess there is the Victorian chicklit (Jane Austen), the modern chicklit (Marian Keyes) and then there is this ... "war chicklit"... I just don't know how to name it or classify it. It's the first book of its kind that I've ever read. I'm intrigued. And convinced. There are two sequels to this book, and they stand firmly on my TBR now.

What I really enjoyed about this book was the narrative style. The book is written in first person, but not through the eyes of Linda, although she is the main character, but rather through the eyes of her cousin Fanny. I enjoy this kind of prose rather than having a third-person, god-like narrative who knows what everyone is thinking, which I find sometimes doesn't quite manage to convey emotions well. And a first person narrative by the main character also lacks an outside perspective. The whole story ends up being really quite one sided. With a first-person narrative by someone other than the main character, you get outside perspective and judgement (whether good or bad) but also various views, since the narrator will relay other character's opinions too, which they would not have necessarily shared with the main character.