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Darling

Reviewed by Tricia Gilbey 

India Knight (PRH Fig Tree: 2022)


I must start with a confession. I have only ever read the beginning of Nancy Mitford’s The Pursuit of Love, on which this novel is based. I enjoyed the set up but, once I got to Linda Radlett’s first marriage to the awful Tony Kroesig, I gave up on it. Bubbling under were my doubts: I have read that Nancy Mitford wrote her novel in an attempt to make her family’s reputation as Nazi sympathisers and agitators more palatable; and that although she’d reported her sister Diana (married to Oswald Mosley) to the U.K. authorities in 1940, for ‘plotting the downfall of democracy’, they became close again after the war.*


However, reading India Knight’s Darling,  a clever, contemporary take on the story of the Radlett family, has been a joy, and, yes, I reached the end, and wished it had gone on longer. While some events have been altered, the characters are just as extreme in their loving and loathing. The novel, as before, is narrated by Linda’s cousin, Franny, while Linda’s sister, Jassy, brings a caustic wit to her observations of Linda's relationships – and provides a foil for her sister’s naïve but ardent pursuit of love.


Uncle Matthew, Linda’s father, jumps from the page. In this version he is an angry, retired rock-god trying to live in obscurity in rural Norfolk. Aunt Sadie comes across beautifully as his long-suffering, serene third wife who sometimes has to suppress her giggles at the extremes of her daughter’s love life. A sense of humour is necessary in her own marriage too as her husband's dislikes stretch across three pages. These include: ‘...people whose arms he considered too long, dietary supplements, bath oil (‘bath grease’) members’ clubs, cars with bull bars, these causing him to aggressively enquire about their owners’ moose problem, artichokes (‘don’t trust them’) facial hair, chicory, Surrey, the colour teal (‘not a real colour’), fountain pens...’ (18). And  books too – except, bizarrely, A Street Cat Named Bob. But the most wonderfully unlikely thing about Uncle Matthew is how attached he gets to his new brother-in-law, Davey, who suffers from anxiety about his gut microbiome. By the end of the book, they’re ‘Insta-ing’ together every morning.


India Knight embroiders her settings with details of interiors, fashion, art and cooking, and she truly did make me laugh out loud as she satirises modern life and current obsessions and behaviours. She has made this novel warm and involving and I longed for Linda’s pursuit of love to work out well, not least because she was ‘wholly and undeviatingly true to herself’ (136). Using the flaws of human nature and some tragic quirks of fate, India Knight brings comedy, warmth and colour to us at a time when these are very much needed. At our event in December, I hope that you will join me in hearing about how India Knight reimagined this well-known novel.



India Knight will be talking to Suffolk Book League at an event on Thursday 5th December.


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