For a reader unfamiliar with Nancy Mitford’s The Pursuit of Love, India Knight’s reimagining would be a perfect comfort read: the kind of book you take into the bath and keep reading even when the water has gone cold, a one-sitting dark-at-four joy.
Briefly, then, for that reader: teenage Linda Radlett lives in “the very definition of emptiness” (north Norfolk). Marooned in a tiny hamlet with her rock-star father Matthew, wafting bohemian mother Sadie, many siblings and narrator cousin Frances for company, Linda dreams of the future: mostly love affairs, with a side order of freedom. Darling is the story of her growing up: the people she meets; the men she falls in love with; and her friendship, enduring and eternal, with Frances.
