TBR (To be Read) Pile Book #1 – Love in a Cold Climate

Medium – Audiobook

About the Book – Fanny Logan, a 19-year-old at the beginning of the book, is the narrator of Nancy Mitford’s sequel to ‘The Pursuit of Love’. Fanny is cousin to ‘The Radletts’ – the semi-autobiographical reimagining of Mitford’s own slightly eccentric family. In this book, we encounter Polly Hampton, the only daughter of Lord and Lady Montdore. She is absolutely beautiful but doesn’t seem to be able to attract gentlemen suitors, much to the dismay of her mother. However, soon enough it becomes clear that Polly has been harbouring feelings for a man for a good deal of her life – but that man is her recently-widowed uncle, Boy Dugdale.

My Feelings: This book really reminded me of PG Wodehouse’s writings, except with more sex and homosexuality – not necessarily depicted much in contemporary writings about the 1920s. The narrative style is extremely sardonic, with nothing taken particularly seriously, even the death of a child and whisperings of Boy Dugdale liking very young girls. Which is gross. But I think the books are probably a fairly accurate rendering of what life was really like in the 1920s, rather than the slightly rose-tinted view put forward by Wodehouse. The book is certainly one ‘of its time’ but ignoring the racist and sexist overtones, parts of the book are funny.

I think the main reason I rated this book so highly is because of the characterisation, especially in the characters of Fanny and Cedric. Fanny, our main narrator, is shown as a tolerant, caring, compassionate narrator, perhaps easily swayed by others, but generally a person with her heart in the right place and she engages the reader quite sympathetically. Cedric is just wonderful – the homosexual (and proud of it!) heir to Polly’s parents, he is extravagant, joyful and extremely funny. By the end of the book, he has steered quite a lot of the action in his favour, and you can’t help but admire his scheming, although it seems to have been done to guarantee his own happiness as well as the other people around him.