Darling

'A savagely funny, bracingly sad, dazzlingly clever reimagining of The Pursuit of Love. I loved it. Meg Mason, author of Sorrow and Bliss 'A triumph! Brilliantly done, faithful but imaginative, tremendously romantic and very funny.' Nina Stibbe, author of Reasons to be CheerfulMarooned in a sprawling farmhouse in Norfolk, teenage Linda Radlett feels herself destined for greater things. She longs for love, but how will she ever find it? She can't even get a signal on her mobile phone. Linda's strict, former rock star father terrifies any potential suitors away, while her bohemian mother, wafting around in silver jewellery, answers Linda's urgent questions about love with upsettingly vivid allusions to animal husbandry.Eventually Linda does find her way out from the bosom of her deeply eccentric extended family, and she escapes to London. She knows she doesn't want to marry 'a man who looks like a pudding', as her good and dull sister Louisa has done, and marries the flashy, handsome son of a UKIP peer instead. But this is only the beginning of Linda's pursuit of love, a journey that will be wilder, more surprising and more complicated than she could ever have imagined.A razor-sharp, laugh-out-loud novel that re-imagines the cast of Nancy Mitford's The Pursuit of Love.

It takes a brave author to attempt a contemporary reimagining of such a beloved novel. Luckily, India Knight [...] has courage and talent in spades ... It's beautifully and meticulously done, echoing the detail of the original plot as far as feasible, but with contemporary twists ... Knight is warmer than Mitford, and more comforting, Fans of Nancy Mitford's The Pursuit Of Love will adore this brilliant contemporary take ... The writing is as sharp, the details as perfect, the jokes as funny as [the] original, The delight is in the details. Knight's are bang on, and there's joy in spotting them ... There's heart as well as humour: it was, and remains, a sincere romance ... Pursuit of Love diehards can rest easy: your blood vessels are safe with this faithful, fiercely funny homage, In less talented hands, Knight's retelling of this classic novel might have gone horribly wrong. But Darling is a treat, with whip-smart dialogue, larger-than- life characters, witty observations and a heart-breaking twist ... Fans will love Knight's clever re-imagining of this classic tale - and new readers will relish the chance to discover the glorious Radletts, What could have been a disaster - a modern reimagining of Nancy Mitford's superlative comedy of manners The Pursuit of Love - is an absolute triumph. Romantic, clever and oh-so funny

India Knight is the author of four previous novels: Mutton, Comfort and Joy, Don't You Want Me? and My Life on a Plate. She is a columnist for the Sunday Times and lives in Suffolk with her partner and three children.