The Blessing: Nancy Mitford

English Grace Allingham - good, beautiful and rather stupid - makes an impulsive marriage to Charles-Eduoard de Valhubert. When he comes back from the war and takes her home to Provence, her married life begins - as do her troubles! If the country life in France is complicated, then life in Paris is too much. The terrifying circle of intellectual aunts; the even more terrifying circle of worldly ones; Charles-Eduoard's dangerous old friends with whom he was raised and the even more dangerous attractive new ones who have come out since the war; the modern, earnest Americans; the bewilderingly foreign cuisine and the shockingly decadent manners and mores of the French...all seem equally foreign to Grace. Add to this the Machiavellian machinations of their small son 'Sigi' - the 'blessing' - and Nanny, who is also out of her depth - and you have a hilarious and satirical tale of love, fidelity and the English abroad.