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Title: Hons and Rebels by Jessica Mitford ISBN: 0-575-40004-8 Publisher: Trafalgar Square Pub. Date: September, 2000 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.99 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.86 (7 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: My Mitford summer
Comment: I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I wish I'd read it sooner. Jessica fills in the details of her story, which has been told in other books, but this in her own words. She wrote with wit and humor.
It was fun to read about her plotting to run away from home. She was the bravest of the bunch I think.
The travels in America are interesting to read. Her observations of Americans are on the mark. I was tickled to read how she enjoyed central heating in country houses here considering the cold houses the Mitfords lived in.
In the last chapter she tells of her love for her husband which is very touching.
Rating: 5
Summary: Can't beat the Mitfords
Comment: Decca's account of her eccentric family is every bit as moving and funny as I had hoped. You can't beat the Mitfords in the "fact-is-stranger-than-fiction" category. Decca proves a formidable storyteller and great wit!
Rating: 4
Summary: Furthest and Leftist
Comment: Jessica was in many respects the only Mitford to escape. She did it early and with certainty, drama and flair. The leftist in a confused family of largely fascist and certainly later conservative leanings; Jessica was a 'Bolshie' as Nancy would say. The great pain in her life, that had once been a child's game, was that her favorite sister, Unity, was a Nazi sympathizer and onetime friend of Hitler's. As children, these two would draw the hammer and sickle and schwastikas in competitions each against the other, that ultimately took on more serious proportions. Jessica remained a rebel well into old age.
This book is a love story and a story of breaking free, suffering and surviving. It is also slightly imitative of the works of her older sister, Nancy Mitford, who gained much more celebrity in writing about her upperclass "Hon" sisters and eccentric parents. Interestingly, Nancy found the book to be mean-spirited and somewhat dishonest. I read her thoughts recently in a book of her letters. She did not tell 'Decca' this, but said it openly to many members of her family. Nancy never really opposed the forces and characters in her family- she perhaps improved them in her writing. Her sister was not alligned in that manner- and often felt contempt.
That these girls were brilliant, there is no doubt. The book tells of their made up language, their constant games and spirit that was allowed to flourish, despite the bellowing and controlling father who, in hindsight was pre-occupied with his own fantasies and illusions so that his controls were not as complete as he may have imagined. Also, as with all families,
Farve mellowed by the time the younger children came around.
Jessica fell in love before she actually met her second cousin Esmond Romilly, relative of Churchill and a youthful, avowed Communist. Their story extends to the Spanish Civil War, to the British Embassy in Washington D.C. and ultimately to tragedy and Jessica's rebirth to purely American agenda's, not the least of which was the McCarthy era. The book is less funny than Nancy's but is very worth the read and has its own share of humor. When reading Nancy's letters, I was struck with how deeply she lived within her family throughout her life, despite her French residency. Jessica, seemed less entombed in the Lord Redesdale family, although certainly unforgettably a Mitford, she took the greatest risks, and the most sensational, and committed the gravest offense, that being, emigration to America. I recommend this to anyone intrigued, as I am, by this marvellous family. Jessica was certainly the boldest of the girls.
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Title: The Pursuit of Love & Love in a Cold Climate: Two Novels by Nancy Mitford ISBN: 0375718990 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 04 December, 2001 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: The Sisters: The Saga of the Mitford Family by Mary S. Lovell ISBN: 0393324141 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: March, 2003 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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Title: The Viceroy's Daughters: The Lives of the Curzon Sisters by Anne de Courcy ISBN: 0066210615 Publisher: William Morrow Pub. Date: 02 April, 2002 List Price(USD): $27.95 |
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Title: Counting My Chickens . . .: And Other Home Thoughts by The Duchess of Devonshire, Tom Stoppard ISBN: 0374130299 Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux Pub. Date: 15 October, 2002 List Price(USD): $20.00 |
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Title: Diana Mosley : Mitford Beauty, British Fascist, Hitler's Angel by Anne de Courcy ISBN: 0060565322 Publisher: William Morrow Pub. Date: 21 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
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