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#BookReview ‘The Blessing’ by Nancy Mitford #satire #historical

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The Blessing by Nancy Mitford tells of the wartime romance and marriage of young Englishwoman Grace Allingham and dashing Frenchman Charles-Edouard de Valhubert. Both are aristocratic but from completely different backgrounds. How, you wonder, could this marriage possibly work. Mitford has great fun with the gulf of understanding between the two nationalities, still recovering after the war. Nancy Mitford

At the beginning of the war, Grace’s fiancé Hughie goes off to fight. Despite being engaged, she falls head over heels in love with the flirtatious Frenchman Charles-Edouard and marries him. A fortnight after their wedding, Charles-Edouard returns to Cairo. Nine months later, Grace gives birth to a boy, Sigismond. The war years pass by. Grace ‘lived in a dream of Charles-Edouard, so that as the years went by he turned, in her mind, into somebody quite divorced from all reality and quite different from the original.’ Even when peace is declared, Charles-Edouard’s return is announced and delayed, announced and delayed. Always, there is a gap between expectation and reality. Not all is as it seems.

When he finally returns, he collects his wife and now five-year-old son and takes them to live in France, first at the family seat Bellandargues in Southern France, later in Paris. And now the English/French comedy begins as Grace, and her English Nanny, adapt to French cuisine, foreign customs and the shockingly decadent manners and unspoken rules of French society.

When Grace discovers the truth of her husband’s idea of marriage – including a permanent mistress and various casual affairs – she returns to her father’s London home with Sigi in tow. And now the funniest part of the novel begins. As both sides of the family encourage the couple to reconcile, Sigi is convinced he will benefit materially from having two separate parents, gaining more attention, more gifts and general spoiling. And so he proves himself efficiently cunning in keeping his parents apart.

It took me a long time to work out the meaning of the title, so I won’t give away the secret here. I found the start slow but the question of if and when Grace will realise the truth of Charles-Edouard kept me reading, until I realised I wanted them to reunite. The funniest characters are Sigi – who I wanted to slap whilst at the same time cheerfully cheering him on – and Nanny, who stoutly refuses French food and cooks in the nursery over a spirit lamp.

Written from personal experience – Mitford both lived in Paris and had a long affair with a Frenchman – I found the humour unsentimental and non-PC so perhaps the funnier for that.
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Read my reviews of Mitford’s earlier novels:-
Highland Fling
Christmas Pudding
Wigs on the Green
Pigeon Pie
The Pursuit of Love
Love in a Cold Climate

If you like this, try:-
‘How to Stop Time’ by Matt Haig
‘Stanley and Elsie’ by Nicola Upson
‘Mothering Sunday’ by Graham Swift

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
THE BLESSING by Nancy Mitford #bookreview https://wp.me/p5gEM4-46K via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘Love in a Cold Climate’ by Nancy Mitford #satire #historical

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A companion novel to The Pursuit of Love, Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford is a tale of a group of aristocratic families, told by narrator Fanny Wincham. Both novels are stories about other people, rather than about Fanny herself. Love in a Cold Climate is about Lady Leopoldina ‘Polly’ Hampton and, like all Mitford’s novels, there is a satire in her portrayal of the whims and foibles of the English upper class. It is like reading of a lost world though the satire in this novel is less biting than her earlier novels. Nancy Mitford

Mitford does create unforgettable characters. Not Fanny who, like Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby, is something of a transparent uncomplicated observer, but Lady Montdore and Cedric are both memorable, especially when seen together. The novel finally takes off with the appearance of Cedric but there is quite a lot of background to set up before this point is reached. In a modern novel, the background would be slipped in carefully so allowing the story’s conflict to be quickly addressed.

Eighteen-year old Fanny lives with relatives due to the absence of her separated parents. Among her neighbours are the Montdores of Hampton near Oxford, recently returned from India where Lord Montdore was viceroy. Polly, also eighteen, reflects on the differing nature of love in a hot, and a cold climate. In the early pages Polly’s mother Lady Montdore despairs of her daughter ever falling in love with a young man and giving birth to the next heir of the Montdore fortune. Unfortunately for them, their only child Polly falls in love with an unsuitable older man. A family rift ensues, Polly is disinherited and flees abroad with her new husband. Into this vacuum arrives the new heir, a distant relative from the Canadian branch of the family. Cedric is something of a surprise and Fanny, expecting the Montdores to hate him on sight, watches with amazement as the foppish outrageous Cedric wins a place in their hearts. When Polly returns from Sicily, she finds a changed world.

This is not a plot-driven novel which at times was frustrating, leaving me with the feeling that the narrative was drifting along. This is remedied with the arrival of conflict, ie Cedric, who comes alive off the page. I did long to hear the internal monologues of Cedric and Lady Montdore; not of Polly though, who remains a rather flat uninspiring character. I started reading the novel thinking it was Polly’s story, but finishing it thinking it was about her mother and Cedric. Not as laugh-out-loud as Mitford’s earlier novels.
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Read my reviews of Mitford’s earlier novels:-
Highland Fling
Christmas Pudding
Wigs on the Green
Pigeon Pie 
The Pursuit of Love 

If you like this, try these:-
‘Half of the Human Race’ by Anthony Quinn
‘The Long View’ by Elizabeth Howard
‘Amy Snow’ by Tracy Rees 

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
LOVE IN A COLD CLIMATE by Nancy Mitford #bookreview https://wp.me/p5gEM4-3U2 via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘Friends in Low Places’ by Simon Raven #Historical #Literary

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Simon RavenFriends in Low Places by Simon Raven, second in the ‘Alms for Oblivion’ series, starts in April 1959 with an old character and a new. Widow Angela Tuck has taken up with a sleazy con man. Mark Lewson, who steals from Angela and then loses her money at the casino, is a loathsome character and she can’t wait to be rid of him. Rippling throughout the novel is the seemingly impossible plan hatched by Angela’s gambler friend to help her. He charges Lewson with buying or stealing a letter that incriminates the British Government in a scandal concerning Suez.

This is an enjoyable read about a bunch of charlatans and is a window on the behavior of a group of the English upper class in the Sixties, when the reverberations of the Suez Crisis continued to ripple throughout society. At the heart is the manipulation by everyone concerned during the selection process by the local Tory party to choose its parliamentary candidate for Bishop’s Cross. When the mysterious letter about the Suez scandal becomes available, a chase is on to first, possess the letter; and second, to use it as a bargaining chip for the candidature. The Suez errors are never defined, and perhaps by modern standards they would seem small beer, but the manipulations, double-crossing and blackmail seem, unfortunately, very believable today. Behind the smiles are knives. Do not take anyone at face value.

As well as Angela Tuck, familiar characters from the first book reappear, including rival parliamentary candidates Somerset Lloyd-James and Peter Morrison. Journalist Tom Llewellyn also features again, marring the daughter of the grandly named conservative minister Sir Edwin Turbot who may, or may not, be involved in the Suez scandal. Turbot’s friend Lord Canteloupe [the more outrageous the name, the more outrageous the satire] is put in charge of entertaining the working class population. His Westward Ho! caravan park is a political fudge designed for publicity purposes, which unwittingly becomes the hideout for a couple on the run from the law. This is a whirlwind of political shenanigans, sexual shenanigans, two-timing, betrayals and marriages of convenience.

Raven has a wonderful turn of phrase. For example, ‘Sir Edwin turned up his eyes and stuck his spoon into the middle of his peach melba, with the air of a soldier planting a sabre to mark a fallen comrade’s newly filled grave.’

Much easier to read than The Rich Pay Late, first in the series, I think because many of the same characters appear and I felt familiar with them. Well-written, humorous in places but not shocking when compared with modern politics.
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Read my review of The Rich Pay Late, book one in the Alms for Oblivion series

If you like this, try:-
‘All Among the Barley’ by Melissa Harrison
‘Union Street’ by Pat Barker
‘Wigs on the Green’ by Nancy Mitford

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
FRIENDS IN LOW PLACES by Simon Raven #bookreview https://wp.me/p5gEM4-3Xy via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘Pigeon Pie’ by Nancy Mitford #satire #historical

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Nancy MitfordPigeon Pie, the fourth novel of Nancy Mitford, was first published in 1940 by Hamish Hamilton. This was a serious error by its publisher given that Mitford wrote this light-hearted satire about wartime spying just before World War Two broke out in 1939. Not surprisingly, it was a commercial miss. Which is a shame. It is a funny, more tightly-plotted and disciplined novel than her first three and is a transition between her pre-war and post-war novels.

At the outbreak of war, Lady Sophia Garfield enrols at her nearest First Aid Post and is put in charge of the office, folding and counting laundry and taking telephone calls. As the book is set during the first few months of war, the Phoney War, not a lot happens for Sophia except endless first aid drills. She teases an acquaintance, Olga – who poses in the press as a mysterious Mata Hari figure – and lunches with inept friends Ned and Fred who work at the Ministry of Information. Then Sophia stumbles on a nest of spies; or counter-spies, or counter-counter spies, she’s not sure which.

Although her characters seem of a type with those of her first three novels – Mitford has a reputation for writing about the upper class, their extravagant and thoughtless lifestyles – in Pigeon Pie they are less cartoonish. Sophia particularly is interesting, drawn as she is into different worlds: her husband Luke’s enthusiasm for a new American religion, the Boston Brotherhood, brings new friends to dinner and a lodger upstairs; her godfather Sir Ivor King, aka The King of Song, disappears; journalist Rudolph Jocelyn enlists; and Sister Wordsworth at the Post is jolly and efficient about bandages and disinfectants and such like. Mitford weaves a plot of spies, kidnapping, bombs, code and general sneaking around, despite Sophia being unable to remember Morse Code and seeing codes in innocent messages.

This had me chuckling aloud.

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Read my reviews of Mitford’s earlier novels Highland Fling, Christmas Pudding and Wigs on the Green.

If you like this, try these:-
‘The Paying Guests’ by Sarah Waters
‘The Heat of the Day’ by Elizabeth Bowen
‘The Slaves of Solitude’ by Patrick Hamilton

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PIGEON PIE by Nancy Mitford #bookreview https://wp.me/p5gEM4-3h2 via @SandraDanby

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

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Nancy MitfordWhen 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].

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 Highland Fling and Christmas Pudding by Nancy Mitford.

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

‘Wigs on the Green’ by Nancy Mitford’ [UK: Penguin]

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WIGS ON THE GREEN by Nancy Mitford #bookreview https://wp.me/p5gEM4-340 via @SandraDanby