The Pursuit of Love

Synopsis: 'Obsessed with sex!' said Jassy, 'there's nobody so obsessed as you, Linda. Why if I so much as look at a picture you say I'm a pygmalionist'. In the end we got far more information out of a book called "Ducks and Duck Breeding". 'Ducks can only copulate,' said Linda, after studying this for a while, 'in running water. Good luck to them'. Oh the tedium of waiting to grow up! Longing for love, obsessed with weddings and sex, Linda and her sisters and cousin Fanny are on the look out for the perfect lover. But finding Mr Right is much harder than any of the sisters thought. Linda must suffer marriage first to a stuffy Tory MP and then to a handsome and humorousless communist before finding real love in war-torn Paris..."The Pursuit of Love" is one of the funniest, sharpest novels about love and growing up ever written.

Review: I only picked this book up for five minutes, I'd just been talking about it to Kylie on the BCF and I thought I'd flick through the first few pages to reacquaint myself with it and before I knew it I was halfway through. I'm not sure what it is about it that I find just so perfectly right for me, it's probably the humour which is the sort I like best .. observational, biting and a little bit wicked. There's a touch of the Wodehouse's about it and the Waugh's and If Jane Austen had written in the 1940's it wouldn't be far off this. It's said to be semi-autobiographical in that the Radlett family certainly bear more than a passing resemblance to the Mitford's.

This is the story of Linda Radlett as told by her cousin Fanny Logan. Linda is beautiful, naive and a hopeless romantic. Not everyone takes to Linda as a character but rather like Fanny, I love her to bits. When the book starts the girls are fourteen and desperate to fall in love, they settle on the most unlikely imaginary suitors (the Prince of Wales for Linda and a fat farmer from the village for Fanny) and have conspiratorial chats in the Hons cupboard (a secret Radlett society which takes place in the warm linen cupboard .. anyone who is admired is a 'Hon' all enemies are 'counter Hons'.) Their great hero is Oscar Wilde ...

Fanny : 'but what did he do?'
Linda : 'I asked Fa once and he roared at me - goodness it was terrifying. He said "If you mention that sewer's name again in this house I'll thrash you, do you hear damn you?" So I asked Sadie and she looked awfully vague and said "Oh duck, I never really quite knew, but whatever it was was worse than murder, fearfully bad. And darling don't talk about him at meals, will you?"
Fanny : 'We must find out'
Linda : 'Bob says he will, when he goes to Eton.'

A couple of years later at Linda and Fanny's coming-out ball, Linda meets Tony and falls deeply in love with him, she thinks him handsome and glamorous and doesn't look far beyond it. She's in love with love and refuses to listen to the advice of those around her .. when the mist clears and the stars fade she finds herself married to one of the most terrific bores in the country. This leaves her in a bit of a dilemma, Linda needs to love and be loved and it's clear that Tony see's her as little more than a 'trophy wife' on the other hand she doesn't want to turn out like Fanny's mother (a woman who ran away from her men so often that she became known as 'the Bolter'.)

The star of the book is definitely Uncle Matthew (Linda's father,) a roaring, rude, ogre of a man with a list of prejudices as long as your arm and an entrenching tool over the fireplace to whack huns with. His bark is invariably worse than his bite and despite his fearsome reputation he is generally beloved by all those that truly know him.

Don't take too much notice of the synopsis which has been taken straight from the book blurb. It makes the book sound more like 'Sex and the City' which is misleading. The girls are only obsessed with weddings and sex in the manner of girls who have no inkling about either. They want to know everything but in fact know nothing and their attempts at guessing are hilarious. But for all of it's hilarity the story of Linda's search for love is also incredibly sad. The ending is short and sharp and makes me catch my breath every time.

I don't think I've ever agreed with the Daily Mail before but this book is 'utter, utter, bliss'