Darling: A razor-sharp, gloriously funny retelling of Nancy Mitford’s The Pursuit of Love

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What an extra treat to have read it right after having read the original Mitford‘s one, all the details India Knight wove in shone even brighter. The Things That We Lost is a beautifully tender exploration of family, loss and how far we will go to protect the ones we love. Most purchases from business sellers are protected by the Consumer Contract Regulations 2013 which give you the right to cancel the purchase within 14 days after the day you receive the item. I'm glad that I read the original text that this retelling is taken from so that I had that knowledge of the storyline and could appreciate the masterful way that India Knight has revamped the story but kept the heart of the characters the same. Irascible patriarch Uncle Matthew is a reformed rock star and his notorious Great War entrenching tool a bloodstained Brit award he used to brain a drummer while ‘high on pharmaceutical-grade cocaine’.

Somehow, India Knight's writing manages to be hilarious, melancholy, insightful, and romantic all at the same time. It takes chutzpah to tackle a national treasure as jealously loved and gatekept as Nancy Mitford’s The Pursuit of Love. Her story is told by Fran, the cousin who had been sent to grow up with the Radletts when it became clear that her care-free mother couldn’t give her the stable childhood she needed. Knight makes Linda’s third love affair, with French hotel tycoon Fabrice El Hassane, dizzyingly romantic. Thirteen days before they are due to be married, Kit reveals an awful truth, cracking the facade Piglet has created.Durante o período de teste, é possível usufruir de todos os benefícios da assinatura de maneira gratuita. Treat yourself to this novel - Katherine Heiny, author of Early Morning Riser You may also be interested in. Uncle Matthew is now a retired rock-star who wants to protect his children from the tabloids; Lord Merlin, the effete neighbour in Mitford’s original, becomes fashion wunderkind Merlin Berners (a nod to Lord Berners, who inspired the character); Davey, obsessed with his health, fits seamlessly into the modern world: “‘I have a lot of time for the late Dr Mayr’s method. Her first venture into literature was 2000’s My Life on a Plate, charting a woman’s complicated family life which was more or less a fictionalised account of her own story. How on earth do you transpose a novel so distinctive, and whose plot hinges on the fraught political backdrop of early 20th-century Europe, to today’s world?

It was irreverent and refreshing, witty and erudite, very much in a similar vein to Bridget Jones’ Diary and other women’s fiction hits that came out around that time. If we told someone that this was our life,” says the central character in Darling, “they wouldn’t believe us. There always seems to be another volume of collected letters, or a gorgeous edition, or a biography coming out; the most recent was Laura Thompson’s 2016 group study The Six.But I will stop listing them now, as you really need to read them in their wonderfully written rant mode to fully appreciate them!

This is a book full of lovely things: clothes and curtains and old Apple Mac computers in “boiled-sweet pink”. I have done ever since I picked up a copy of Angus, Thongs and Full Frontal Snogging by Louise Rennison when I was 13 and would spend hours laughing over every sentence.

They also have their own codes, words, abbreviations – which as a mother of 4, and with our own family ‘things’, I totally understand.