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

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For a reader unfamiliar with Nancy Mitford’s The Pursuit of Love, India Knight’s reimagining would be a perfect comfort read: the kind of book you take into the bath and keep reading even when the water has gone cold, a one-sitting dark-at-four joy. Linda’s life story was rehashed to the smallest details, while the ‘I’, Franny, happily faded into the background, playing a secondhand character to Linda. This is perhaps because Knight, free from the innate pressures of the roman à clef, has enough distance for clarity. Trouble is, Linda’s lived a very sheltered life and tends to see the best in people, even when people aren’t being their best. Darling is the story of her growing up: the people she meets; the men she falls in love with; and her friendship, enduring and eternal, with Frances.

Mitford never wrote a really good marriage (Fanny’s husband, in Pursuit and sequels, is the very definition of a nonentity), and it’s tempting to wonder whether she ever could. I felt genuinely traumatised with the abrupt, matter-of-fact manner in which the story was tossed aside. Knight also takes a gleeful magnifying glass to the hypocrisies of modern life, from rigorous dieter Blanche going to restaurants solely for social media content, to Christian making Linda do all the housework, because paying a cleaner is “immoral”. Some of the data that are collected include the number of visitors, their source, and the pages they visit anonymously. The book starts with the kids growing up in rural Norfolk – with the occasional trip to Cromer for the children’s excitement.The book then follows all of the family – but primarily Linda on her pursuit of love, taking in London and Paris as well as Norfolk. In fact, nobody in my book group really rated it - mostly, the reaction was: "Why bother writing it at all?

It takes chutzpah to tackle a national treasure as jealously loved and gatekept as Nancy Mitford’s The Pursuit of Love. I actually snorted with laughter in several bits of it - particularly when Uncle Matthew and Davey get obsessed with Instagram. 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.Their madcap world is peopled by creations such as Fanny’s serial monogamist mother The Bolter and irascible patriarch Uncle Matthew, who enjoys xenophobia and hunting his children with bloodhounds across the Oxfordshire countryside. 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. Also, any book that manages to make me laugh out loud (or snort) multiple times, has a special place in my heart.