Tag Archives: humorous novels

#BookReview ‘A Lady’s Guide to Fortune-Hunting’ by Sophie Irwin #romance

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Just what I needed after finishing a more weighty and time-consuming read, A Lady’s Guide to Fortune-Hunting by Sophie Irwin propelled me along on a wave of flirting and social waltzing. And I gulped it down like a mug of hot chocolate on an icy day.Sophie Irwin

Kitty Talbot is in need of a husband, quickly. After the deaths of first her mother then her father, Kitty, as the eldest of five girls, is left with the financial and caring responsibilities of her younger sisters and a huge debt. With 12 weeks to pay the money owed or vacate their childhood home Netley Cottage, Kitty decides a husband with the right amount of wealth must be sought. The twenty-year old problem solver, always pragmatic, heads to London with bookish sister Cecily in tow, to stay with an old friend of their mother. Aunt Dorothy is not their aunt and, Kitty fears, her history may not withstand close examination. But Kitty’s plan is to gain admittance to the London season – specifically the circle of ‘the ton’, the wealthiest and most aristocratic of London’s social scene – and find a man richer than is available to her in Dorsetshire. He must wipe out the Talbot debt and ensure the financial security of the five sisters. Aunt Dorothy is the only person Kitty knows, despite never having met the lady, who might help them.
A combination of scheming Becky Sharp and witty Elizabeth Bennet, Kitty occupies the fine line between being a fortune-seeker, a flirt and a liar. She is sharp-witted, charming, eager to learn and brave. The latter quality comes in useful as she must enter ballrooms full of people she knows she recently offended due in part to her lack of knowledge of social conventions and in part to the delicate sensitivities and prejudices of the offended. The social mores of ‘the ton’ are unpredictable, difficult to predict and often silly. So she holds her head high and seeks help from the most unlikely places. Lord Radcliffe, the elder brother of one of Kitty’s first flirtations, becomes an unwilling mentor. In a deal to ensure Kitty will not engage with his younger, naïve brother Archie, Radcliffe agrees to give Kitty guidance on London’s social minefield. Neither is wholly satisfied with their deal. Kitty, because Radcliffe is often unable to give her the most helpful information [how deep or shallow a curtsey should be to people of differing ranks, for example] and Radcliffe because he fears he will never be rid of her.
Funny and entertaining, complete with unpredictable siblings who get into trouble, embarrassing beaux, flirtations and elopements, gambling and pistols, I enjoyed this immensely. The plot moves on swiftly and, though the language and detail sometimes slips from period accuracy, I decided to ignore that and go with the fun.

If you like this, try:-
‘The Convenient Marriage’ by Georgette Heyer
‘The 20s Girl, The Ghost, and All That Jazz’ by June Kearns
‘The Girl at the Window’ by Rowan Coleman

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview A LADY’S GUIDE TO FORTUNE-HUNTING by Sophie Irwin https://wp.me/p5gEM4-5Sq via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘Wigs on the Green’ by Nancy Mitford #humour #satire

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When office worker Noel Foster inherits three thousand three hundred and fourteen pounds from an aunt and sets his heart on finding a girl to marry, his friend tells him, ‘It’s such a fearful gamble. Much better put the money on a horse and be out of your misery at once.’ And so starts Wigs on the Green, the third novel by Nancy Mitford. But as well as a social satire of the upper class circles in which she moved, as in her previous novels, in Wigs on the Green Mitford had a more personal target in mind: the fascist pretensions of her sisters Unity and Diana. The sisters disliked the novel; it caused a family rift and was not republished within Mitford’s lifetime [she died in 1973]. Nancy Mitford Money and sex are at the heart of the story; the spending and gaining of money, the marrying into money, and the pursuit of sex seemingly regardless of the eligibility and marital status of the intended. Noel and his friend Jasper Aspect go to Chalford in search of the young heiress, Eugenia Malmains. Their first glimpse of the over-enthusiastic fascism-obsessed Eugenia is as she gives a public speech on behalf of the Union Jack Movement to the Chalford villagers, ‘Britons, awake! Arise! Oh, British lion!’. This is the first of Mitford’s novels to transition from the Twenties, with tales of the chaotic partying and shenanigans of the Bright Young Things, into the Thirties and the rising threat of fascism in Europe. The fascination with National Socialism, the jackboots and roaring nationalism portrayed in Wigs on the Green was actually happening as the blackshirts of Oswald Mosley – husband of Mitford’s sister Diana – gained in popularity. Read today, this is still funny but I also found uncomfortable parallels with the 21st century nationalism of Brexit. For this reason alone, Wigs on the Green is worth reading. Mitford excels at comic portrayals of characters verging on ridiculous but with the capacity for self-deception we may recognise in real people.
Noel falls in lust with local beauty Mrs Lace. Meanwhile, two mysterious young ladies, Miss Smith and Miss Jones, check into the village pub The Jolly Roger, soon followed by two men in raincoats. The two men, and two women, all suspect these to be detectives. As Noel starts to resent the way Jasper runs up bills on Noel’s tab and not his own, Jasper mischievously hints to Mrs Lace that Noel is something other than he appears. He likes to be treated as a normal person, he hints, because of course he is very special. This leads her to believe Noel is an exiled Balkan prince. Noel and Jasper sign up for Eugenia’s party and are now addressed by her as Union Jackshirt Foster and Union Jackshirt Aspect. Meanwhile Eugenia is brought into conflict with friends of Mrs Lace, the thespians and artists from nearby Rackenbridge. As political differences widen and unsuitable sexual conquests are sought, the climax comes at an event originally intended as Eugenia’s coming-out party – a pageant at Chalford Park when everyone comes together to act out the visit of George III and Queen Charlotte – which evolves into a Union Jack Movement event instead. Chaos is the result.
There are moments of sharp social observation and moments that made me chuckle. The political satire is cutting, but stays in the background; Mitford had to tread a fine line in order to avoid being sued by her brother-in-law.

Read my reviews of these other novels by Nancy Mitford:-
CHRISTMAS PUDDING
HIGHLAND FLING
LOVE IN A COLD CLIMATE
PIGEON PIE
THE BLESSING
THE PURSUIT OF LOVE

Read the #FirstPara of THE PURSUIT OF LOVE

If you like this, try these:-
‘The Light Years’ by Elizabeth Jane Howard #1CAZALET
‘The Secrets of Gaslight Lane’ by MRC Kasasian #4GOWERDETECTIVE
‘The Bone Church’ by Victoria Dougherty

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
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#BookReview ‘The Audacious Mendacity of Lily Green’ by Shelley Weiner #romance #contemporary

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The title of The Audacious Mendacity of Lily Green by Shelley Weiner suggests this tale is about telling the truth and telling lies, a clever novel of social comment which made me smile frequently at the spot-on observations. Beneath the smiles though, are layers of contradictions, degrees of untruths and some wicked humour. Shelley Weiner Lily Green is 34 and a virgin, both in terms of sexuality and deception [circumstances that seem a little unrealistic for her age, but stick with it]. Lily tells her domineering mother that she is engaged to be married, and the story takes off as Lily’s combination of innocence and intuitive reasoning kicks in. Her unsympathetic mother departs on a holiday with ‘the girls’ and once she is gone, Lily wonders who Eva really is. “… Lily had a sense of her mother in masquerade – a series of costumes in which she’d played suburban wife, then grieving widow, and now crone in glad rags. Were the outfits like onion leaves with nothing inside, or as now seemed fleetingly possible, was there someone real beneath the camouflage.”
Just as Lily doesn’t know her mother, she also doesn’t know herself. She tears cuttings from women’s magazines – how to lose weight, how to cook lobster, how to seduce a man – as if she is casting around for behaviour which will give her a clue to her own identity. So she sets off from Hatch End… to London, a journey of 18 miles, hardly a grand adventure. But that’s the point; Lily could make this journey from the house she shares with her mother, but she lacks the self-confidence and ability to assert herself. She knows neither herself, nor her mother, and therefore flounders to find a place in the world. But as she invents a life and personality for herself, she meets other people who tell the truth and tell lies: how can she distinguish between them?
A funny novel which can be read on two levels: a quick poolside read for your holiday, or a social commentary which as you read it will make you review how much you tell the truth. And do you really know your own mother?

If you like this, try:-
‘The Girls’ by Lisa Jewell
‘One Step Too Far’ by Tina Seskis
‘59 Memory Lane’ by Celia Anderson

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE AUDACIOUS MENDACITY OF LILY GREEN by Shelley Weiner via @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1Ie