Skip to main content

Christmas Pudding by Nancy Mitford

Our festive book of the month for December was Christmas Pudding by Nancy Mitford. Set around a Christmas party at a posh house in the 1920s countryside, it was a mere 180 pages long, had a beautiful cover and couldn't have a more festive name if it tried. It looked like a cracker!

 "The formidable fox-hunter Lady Bobbin is holding a Christmas house party. Attendees include her rebellious daughter Philadelphia, a pompous suitor, a couple of children poring over newspaper death notices, and a dejected writer whose first serious novel has been declared the funniest book of the year. Add to the mix beautiful ex-courtesan Amabelle Fortescue and her guests staying in a neighbouring cottage and you have a ribald tale of true love and false fidelity, hijinks and low morals, not to mention the consumption of a considerable quantity of Christmas spirit."

 Where’s the pudding?

We almost universally didn't like this book with our major complaint being the lack of anything remotely Christmas in it. In fact it wasn’t until page 100 that the words ‘Christmas pudding’ were even mentioned. The cynics amongst us felt Mitford only went for this title merely so she could sell more books, the less cynical just felt miss-sold.

Now a bit of googling may have been carried out before the meeting to reveal the party that took place in the book was meant to represent the Christmas pudding - you put a load of mismatched ingredients (people) together and get a wonderful pudding (party) as a result.

Where’s the party?

This would have been good except the party was a similar non event. The blurb makes reference to a it, yet (like After the Party) when it eventually happened it didn't really amount to much. This was similar to the whole book really, the love story between Paul and Philadelphia disappointed (was Philadelphia a lesbian?) the humour didn't quite cut it and despite being brief in length we all found it slow to read. It was a bit…boring and left us decidedly un-festive. We gave it a 3.55 out of ten with someone even giving it a 0 (a book club first). "It was just a stupid book*"

*In the interests of fairness I do have to point out that one of us totally loved it and awarded it an 8. Our book club is clearly like a Christmas pudding - lots of different ingredients coming together to make a wonderful group - Merry Christmas you lot xx


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Lock down book club - books from a different country

So we continued with the Zoom version of book club this month and it was lovely to see so many of us tackle it. The theme was books set in a different country (if you can't travel, let a book take you).  I read The Accident on the A35 by Graeme Macrae Burnet, a detective story with an element of tricksy fiction set in France. I really enjoyed it and you can read my full review here. We travelled to America a couple of times most interestingly to see whether Hilary Clinton (or Bill for that fact) would have made President if they had not got married. Rodham by Curtis Sittenfeld is out in hardback now. Norway was a popular spot - Norwegian Nights by Derek B Miller about a retired american marine who moves to Norway and intervenes to save a young boys life sounded interesting. So much so that at least one member of the group has gone on to buy the first in the series, American By Day. We even made it as far as Japan and Botswana (and discovered a Scottish connection for Alexander McCa
Post a Comment
Read more

When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanthi

I expected to be emotionally drained after reading this one and to be honest (in a weird kind of way) I didn’t mind the thought that I would be. This was backed up by the introduction describing a brilliant young man whose writing was breath taking and whose story was devastating. Emotional rollercoaster of epic proportions was surely in store. I didn’t mind the beginning of the book although I was slightly surprised when we delved so deeply into Kalanthi's past in what was only a slim book. I was willing to gloss over the large number of references to his search as a youth to finding the meaning of life and what makes us, us as after all this was written by someone forced to ponder that very question. I also found the medical training he did vaguely interesting, I appreciated the reverence he placed in relation to the cadaver he was required to cut open as part of his medical training. However when it became apparent the actual portion of the book to do with him receiving hi
2 comments
Read more

Mount by Jilly Cooper #inbetweeny

I'll start this blog with a warning, this post does contain spoilers. So if you haven't read the book then please don't read this blog, yet. Of course you should read this post just wait a little while until you've read the latest installment of Rupert Campbell Black (RCB). Warnings out of the way I'll begin. I was massively looking forward to reading this book having hugely enjoyed the previous ones. RCB is my (not so) secret trashy pleasure and has been for many years. This book had all the ingredients of a classic, pages of wonderfully named characters, a few tortured souls and of course RCB with all his horses, dogs and now grandchildren. The book got off to a good start full of characters from old but also plenty of new ones to mix it up a bit. The horse's really played a starring role in this book but I also really loved Gav and at first Gala. Yep only at first as she went strongly down hill and I bet you can guess why. RCB. Here is where I fell o
Post a Comment
Read more