"The Pursuit of Love" - Discussion Questions
For the book club meeting on November 17, 2021
1. What's your rating from 1-10?
2. What did you like best/least about this book?
3. Which characters do you find most appealing and why?
4. Some have claimed that unless we view this novel as pure escapism, it breaks down into destructive elitist humour and snobbery. Do you agree with that assessment, or do you think it overlooks important aspects of the book?
5. If The Pursuit of Love is satire (which it is usually classified as) does it succeed as such? What does it criticise or expose? Which characters receive the harshest satirical treatment? Which characters are presented most sympathetically?
6. One recent reviewer has written, “It is a darker book than I first realised, the superficial lightness concealing a faint and beguiling pessimism about love’s pursuit and its consequences.” Is this a dark(ish) book? Is this book cynical about love?
7. Many readers describe Mitford’s novel as particularly “life-affirming.” What is it about the characters and their lives that could be viewed this way? What are the most admirable character traits portrayed in the novel?
8. What other books did this remind you of?
9. Share a favourite quote from the book. Why did this quote stand out?
10. Would you read another book by this author? Why or why not?
11. What feelings did this book evoke for you?
12. What did you think of the book's length? If it's too long, what would you cut? If too short, what would you add?
13. What songs does this book make you think of?
14. If you got the chance to ask the author of this book one question, what would it be?
15. Which character in the book would you most like to meet?
16. What do you think of the book's title? How does it relate to the book's contents? What other title might you choose?
17. What do you think of the book's cover? How well does it convey what the book is about? If the book has been published with different covers, which one do you like best?
18. What do you think the author's purpose was in writing this book? What ideas was he or she trying to get across?
19. How original and unique was this book?
20. If you could hear this same story from another person's point of view, who would you choose? 21. How well do you think the author built the world in the book?
(Questions 4-8: https://swarthmorebookgroup.wordpress.com/2015/09/02/discussion-questions- for-nancy-mitford-the-pursuit-of-love/ )
Adina's answers:
1. What's your rating from 1-10?
8
2. What did you like best/least about this book?
Liked best:
- the rich autobiographical material, most things in the book being taken from Mitford’s own life (with the character Linda, rather than Fanny, being modeled on herself);
- the many eccentricities of the characters and the causes of some of them (the refusal to educate one’s children, for instance);
- dormice, baby badgers, Plon-Plon and other critters;
- the cunning observations about language, gardens, politics and many other subjects;
- I particularly enjoyed the chapters about the girls as children and life at Alconleigh;
- the serious undertone under the fluffy writing.
Liked less:
- the character of Merlin and especially the fact that he just gives Linda a house. It seemed done just to move the plot along.
3. Which characters do you find most appealing and why?
Linda, naturally – she is indeed a difficult person, but she makes for a most interesting character study, especially since she shares many traits with the author. Rather than bashing her, I felt the author tried to see herself from as many points of view as possible and perhaps, in certain aspects, to see where she might have made better choices in life.
The ending of the book was particularly touching – the question whether it was best for Linda to die when she did, rather than pursue the career of a “Bolter”.
4. Some have claimed that unless we view this novel as pure escapism, it breaks down into destructive elitist humour and snobbery. Do you agree with that assessment, or do you think it overlooks important aspects of the book?
It is a book about British aristocrats, so a lack of elitism and snobbery would have been bizarre. I think there’s more to the book than this, though. It borrows a lot from the lives of a real family – an interesting, but not particularly happy one, and many aspects seemed to ring very true.
However, I think it can be read as pure escapism and enjoyed as such.
5. If The Pursuit of Love is satire (which it is usually classified as) does it succeed as such? What does it criticise or expose? Which characters receive the harshest satirical treatment? Which characters are presented most sympathetically?
For me it was a very funny book, poking fun at almost everything. I particularly enjoyed the portrayal of Davey and the German family in which Linda marries.
6. One recent reviewer has written, “It is a darker book than I first realised, the superficial lightness concealing a faint and beguiling pessimism about love’s pursuit and its consequences.” Is this a dark(ish) book? Is this book cynical about love?
I agree with the above assessment, but I think the cynicism is about what society teaches girls love should be, not about love itself.
7. Many readers describe Mitford’s novel as particularly “life-affirming.” What is it about the characters and their lives that could be viewed this way? What are the most admirable character traits portrayed in the novel?
They breed like rabbits?
8. What other books did this remind you of?
P. G. Wodehouse – the Jeeves books.
9. Share a favorite quote from the book. Why did this quote stand out?
‘It’s rather sad,’ [Linda] said one day, ‘to belong, as we do, to a lost generation. I’m sure in history the two wars will count as one war and that we shall be squashed out of it altogether, and people will forget that we ever existed. We might just as well never have lived at all, I do think it’s a shame.’
‘It may become a sort of literary curiosity,’ Davey said. He sometimes crept, shivering, into the Hons’ cupboard to get up a little circulation before he went back to his writing. ‘People will be interested in it for all the wrong reasons, and collect Lalique dressing-table sets and shagreen boxes and cocktail cabinets lined with looking-glass and find them very amusing. Oh good,’ he said, peering out of the window, ‘that wonderful Juan is bringing in another pheasant.’
Linda’s generation is now known as “the Greatest Generation”, so this soul-searching struck me as rather ironic, particularly in contrast to Davey’s mundane preoccupations.