Nancy Mitford's The Pursuit of Love is one of the funniest, sharpest novels about love and growing up ever written.
'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 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 lookout for the perfect lover.
But finding Mr Right is much harder than any of the sisters had thought. Linda must suffer marriage first to a stuffy Tory MP and then to a handsome and humourless communist, before finding real love in war-torn Paris. . .
'Utter, utter bliss' Daily Mail
Nancy Mitford was the eldest of the infamous Mitford sisters, known for her membership in 'The Bright Young Things' clique of the 1920s and an intimate of Evelyn Waugh; she produced witty, satirical novels with a cast of characters taken directly from the aristocratic social scene of which she was a part. Her novels, Wigs on the Green, Love in a Cold Climate, The Blessing and Don't Tell Alfred, are available in single paperback editions from Penguin or as part of The Penguin Complete Novels of Nancy Mitford which also includes Highland Fling, Christmas Pudding and Pigeon Pie. This edition of The Pursuit of Love is introduced by novelist Zoë Heller.
