The Blessing

by NancyMitford (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  1976

  $3.40

  With characteristically amusing malice, Mitford blends a comedy of manners with culture shock as Grace Allingham, a naive English rose, impulsively marries Charles-Edouard de Valhubert, a French nobleman with all his class's charm and decadence. Both are duped, however, by their son Sigismund -- the Blessing of the title -- a juvenile Machiavelli who mixes Gallic cunning with Saxon thoroughness to become one of Mitford's most memorable characters.

• Used

  Paperback
  2010

  $4.19

  The Blessing by Nancy Mitford with an introduction by Alex Kapranos. It isn't just Nanny who finds it difficult in France when Grace and her young son Sigi are finally able to join her dashing aristocratic husband Charles-Edouard after the war. For Grace is out of her depth among the fashionably dressed and immaculately coiffured French women, and shocked by their relentless gossiping and bedhopping. When she discovers her husband's tendency to lust after every pretty girl he sees, it looks like trouble. And things get even more complicated when little Sigi steps in ...The Blessing is a hilarious tale of love, fidelity, and the English abroad, tailored as brilliantly as a New Look Dior suit. 'Entirely original, inimitable and irresistible' Spectator 'Deliciously funny' Evelyn Waugh 'Utter, utter bliss' Daily Mail Nancy Mitford was the eldest of the infamous Mitford sisters, known for her membership in 'The Bright Young Things' clique of the 1920s and an intimate of Evelyn Waugh; she produced witty, satirical novels with a cast of characters taken directly from the aristocratic social scene of which she was a part. Her novels, Wigs on the Green,The Pursuit of Love,The Blessing andDon't Tell Alfred, are available in single paperback editions from Penguin or as part ofThe Penguin Complete Novels of Nancy Mitford which also includesHighland Fling, Christmas Pudding and Pigeon Pie. This edition of The Blessing features a new introduction by Alex Kapranos.