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

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This is a Mitford retelling, so the British class obsession features prominently, mainly in the form of working-class Uncle Matthew’s complicated loathing of “poshos”. 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”. Husband number one, Tony Kroesig, has been perfectly refashioned as the son of a prominent right-winger. He calls his banking colleagues “proper lads” and has a sister called Blanche (“I thought it a sinister name for the offspring of a Ukip supporter,” thinks Fran).

A savagely funny, bracingly sad, dazzlingly clever reimagining of The Pursuit of Love. I loved it' Meg Mason, author of Sorrow and Bliss Eventually Linda does find her way out from the bosom of her deeply eccentric extended family, and moves to London to become a model. She knows she doesn't want to marry 'a man who looks like a pudding', as her good and dull sister Louisa has done, and marries the flashy, handsome son of a UKIP peer instead. But her new life is unromantic: darker, wilder and more complicated than she expected.We might call this, as a genre, novels of the interior: interiors of places, and interiors of people. It’s easy to dismiss the domestic, but if home is where the heart is, the heart is where all humanity happens. And Darling is a very human book, full of feelings and heartbreak and humour and joy. Inevitably, Linda eventually rebels against her sheltered childhood, running away to London to be a model and then jumping into a duo of ill-fated marriages, which is Knight’s cue to skewer certain quarters of the British ruling class.

So, this book is actually a retelling of Nancy Mitford’s The Pursuit of Love. Never read it. But honestly, I didnt expect to be laughing so much, and I now need to read the original! The most beautiful modern re-tell of a book that I have ever stumbled across in literature. Darling is wrapped around Nancy Mitford’s, ‘Pursuit of Love’ and India Knight could not have captured the heart of the story any better than she has in this beautiful piece of literature. And who can resist the beautiful cover?! 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. In my opinion, this version is better than the original! So fresh, fun and full of heart, charm and whimsy - and that devastating ending comes all the more sharply because the reader has been having such a good time with the Radletts (extra points for including a reference to Cromer!!). But this is only the beginning of Linda's pursuit of love, a journey that will be wilder, more surprising and more complicated than she could ever have imagined.It’s an “haute bohemia”, as the papers put it, lifestyle. Between Aunt Sadie’s hippy leanings and Uncle Matthew’s desire to shield his family from fame, the Radlett children are insulated from much of the modern world, home-schooled and banned from electronic devices. He was obsessed with money and status, perhaps because, as Aunt Sadie pointed out, he was one of those people who are clever enough to work out that they aren't a sufficient draw on their own" India Knight does a fantastic job of capturing the essence of Mitford's original story but brings overlays modernity that makes it more relatable for today. Knight's effervescence of language magnifies the eccentricities of the families to satirical levels. As crazy as things get, there are poignant moments scattered throughout which remind us that love is sometimes not what we imagined, but it can also come when we least expect it. Fans of Nancy Mitford's The Pursuit Of Love will adore this brilliant contemporary take ... The writing is as sharp, the details as perfect, the jokes as funny as [the] original' Daily Mail