The Pursuit of Love

Admittedly, I was drawn to The Pursuit of Love because of the author - I was curious about Nancy Mitford's work, given that I'd read much of her, and a book about her (and her sisters), but nothing by her. Happily, the book lived up to my hopes, and it's a delightful, period "classic" in the same vein as Evelyn Waugh or Irène Némirovsky.

As Amazon notes, "The Pursuit of Love is a classic comedy about growing up and falling in love among the privileged and eccentric." In that sense, the Mitfords are just one in a long line of English aristocrats run amok (the Mountbattens and Carnarvons being others of the same "species"), whose dysfunction makes for entertaining reading, particularly from this distance. Mitford was widely known to have drawn liberally from her own family's quirks in creating her characters, particularly Uncle Matthew, the blustering patriarch; contemporaries mourned the passing of both the real man and the fictional one when David Bertram Ogilvy Freeman-Mitford, 2nd Baron Redesdale died in 1958.

The protagonist of The Pursuit of Love is Linda, the most beautiful and wayward daughter, who has been denied a traditional upbringing, never been to school, and falls for a succession of wildly inappropriate men (at least by her family's standards): first a pompous City man, then a deep red Communist, and finally a French duke whose reputation precedes him.

Still, this is a light, fun read, and I was happy to learn upon its conclusion that this is the first of three novels Mitford wrote with this set of characters. I've already added the others to my reading list.

Five stars. 

Rich People Problems

Kevin Kwan's Rich People Problems is a deliciously satisfying end to the trilogy that began with Crazy Rich Asians. The book opens with family matriarch Su Yi on her deathbed, and the Shang-Youngs descending on the family estate from all corners of the globe to stake their claim to their share of her fortune. Kwan has more in store for readers, though, as the story twists and turns through Singaporean history, and Su Yi's role in events of many decades ago.

As Su Yi lives out her final days and the frenzy over her fortune intensifies, Kwan weaves is wickedly fun sub-plots that range from a pot of laksa being overturned most ingloriously to a wedding proposal at an Indian palace captured by the paparazzi. Kitty Pong, Colette Bing, Oliver T'sien, and even Carlton Bao all have their moments, which makes Rich People Problems such a satisfying end to a series that started out strong, but was followed by the middling-by-comparison China Rich Girlfriend.

Five stars.

The Girls in the Picture

Melanie Benjamin strikes again! After taking on the Lindberghs, Mrs. Tom Thumb, and Truman Capote, Benjamin turned her attention to Frances Marion (like Babe Paley, I asked myself, who??) and Mary Pickford. Frances Marion, I learned, was one of the first - and best - screenwriters in Hollywood. She also happened to be one of few women to ply the trade in the early days of movie making. More inexplicably - although Benjamin certainly does her darnedest to explain it - she was best friends with Ms. Pickford (née Gladys Smith) who was, it seems, rather despicable. 

As always, Benjamin has done her homework and brings her characters fully to life, their fun, fame, and flaws equally on display. Hers is a no-holds-barred style and goes a long way toward capturing her protagonists as they really were (one imagines). She did omit Pickford's children, which is perhaps understandable given that, according to Wikipedia, "Both children later said their mother was too self-absorbed to provide real maternal love. ... Ronnie recalled that "Things didn't work out that much, you know. But I'll never forget her. I think that she was a good woman." 

Her topic - the golden days of Hollywood - has certainly been thoroughly mined (West of Sunset and All the Stars in the Heavens came to mind regularly), but in Frances Marion, Benjamin has found a sympathetic character whose story is likely new to her reading audience. (That said, I do live under a pretty big rock, pop culture-wise, so maybe I've just revealed myself as a complete ignoramus.) On occasion, some of Fran's thoughts seemed forced, or overly filtered through the lens of 21st century America - maybe the actresses resented the patrician attitudes and wandering hands, or maybe 100 years ago, women couldn't envision the world to be otherwise. Who knows? I wasn't around, so I won't pretend I do. More interesting is that the type of people drawn to Hollywood, or more to the point, the types of behavior they seem to openly espouse, hasn't changed in the past century.

I liked The Girls in the Picture and read it quickly. I did think that at times it felt Benjamin was writing just to write; that is, whatever point she'd been working to establish or image she wished to evoke had long been accomplished, but the words still flowed and so she committed them to paper. This is a relatively minor flaw, but enough to say that, had the book been 50 or so pages shorter, I'd have been that much more disposed toward it.

Four stars. 

Lilac Girls

I could not finish Lilac Girls. A little background: the three protagonists are Carolina, an American socialite whiling away the years in a plum positions in the French consulate; Herta, an ambitious doctor with a dark past who accepts a post in Ravensbrück to advance her career; and Kasia, a naïve Polish teenager who joins the Polish resistance for love and for excitement. Their paths begin to intersect when Kasia is arrested and shipped to Ravensbrückalong with a goodly number of those she knows. 

Lilac Girls is beautifully written, the characters well-developed and sympathetic (yes, even Nazi doctor Herta). It’s a visceral, moving story. And therein lay the problem. At the end of the day, I simply didn’t want to read anymore horrors, real or embellished or otherwise. Enough terrible things fill our newspapers and news feeds for me to force myself through a book, thoughtfully written and engaging or no. That’s not a criticism of the author or her work, and I’m certainly not recommending against reading it. But me, today, I need lighter fair, words that feed the spirit rather than ravage it.

Last Hope Island: Britain, Occupied Europe, and the Brotherhood That Helped Turn the Tide of War

Lynne Olson’s Last Hope Island is a fine, but deeply maddening work. Olson does a formidable job of illustrating the ways in which all roads led to London during World War II. The roads range from governments-in-exile, to the management of war strategy, including intelligence and resistance work, to the importance of foreign troops in the Battle for Britain. Olson mined some terrain that was already familiar to me (such as the sabotage of the heavy water plant in Norway), and quite a bit that was new (the depiction of Dutch Queen Wilhelmina was easily my favorite).

Olson also illustrates the many ways in which the import of Britain was unfortunate because the British seemingly seized every opportunity to be pigheaded, careless, and incompetence, and above all arrogant. I was struck more than once by the ways in which the Great Victoria and her descendants managed to wreak havoc across the world, resulting in the deaths of tens (hundreds, perhaps?) of millions and creating the quagmires from which the world still has not extracted itself. Ghastly, just ghastly, as a Brit might say.

Of course, the British were not the only ones who could be stubborn, shortsighted, and arrogant. FDR could play at the game, too, as Olson showcases most aptly in describing his attitude toward Poland and Czechoslovakia: “…he also felt that the United States, the Soviet Union, and Britain had the right to dictate to the less powerful states, not only during the war but afterwards as well.” It's should come as no surprise, then, that Warsaw's final act in the war was tragic, while that of Paris was jubilant.

At regular intervals, I was angry, rather than inspired, which is perhaps Olson’s masterstroke. (Olson, too, can be assumed to harbor a bit of anger; passages such as “the amateurism of SOE was, more often than not, as inept, careless, and downright stupid…” or “cannon fodder for British Intelligence, that’s all we were” are not infrequent.) While some might argue that such a focus detracts from what the British did accomplish, I think it’s worth remembering that the heroics have all been bought and sold by the dozen, but the mistakes and miscalculations are less known, and offer the greater lessons.