Blessings: A Novel

By Anna Quindlen

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “A well-told story of love and redemption” (The Washington Post Book World) from the bestselling author of Still Life with Bread Crumbs
 
“A polished gem of a novel . . . lovingly crafted, beautifully written.”—The Miami Herald
 
Late one night, a teenage couple drives up to the big white clapboard house on the Blessing estate and leaves a box. In that instant, the lives of those who live and work at Blessings are changed forever. Skip Cuddy, the caretaker, finds a baby girl asleep in that box and decides he wants to keep her, while Lydia Blessing, the matriarch of the estate, for her own reasons, agrees to help him. Blessings explores how the secrets of the past affect decisions and lives in the present, what makes a person or a life legitimate or illegitimate and who decides, and the unique resources people find in themselves and in a community.
 
Blessings is a powerful novel of love, redemption, and personal change by a Pulitzer Prize–winning writer.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Sep 17, 2002
• ISBN: 9781588362551

Anna Quindlen

Anna Marie Quindlen is an author, journalist, and opinion columnist. Her New York Times column, Public and Private, won the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 1992.

Reviews for Blessings

[sigmundfraud · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I particularly like women English writers of the midcentury and Nancy Mitford is one of the best. While The Blessing is not considered her best but I loved it. Filled with satire as she compares the English to the French the book is full of chuckles. Very much a novel of manners of the era. I highly recommend this book.

[amniot · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Lighthearted and funny. The theme of adultery and French men is especially timely at the moment, with the Arnold and IMF scandals. I was surprised to find adultery and homosexuality in a book written in 1951. A fun read.

[drmarymccormack · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Kind of a dud for me. I expect a lot from Nancy Mitford. Maybe that's not fair, but I like her personable way of writing and this just didn't measure up for me

[k6gst · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Of Nancy Mitford I’d previously read only one novel, Wigs On the Green, a satire of British Mosleyite blackshirts published in 1935 and never allowed to be republished by Mitford in her lifetime. The ridiculousness of British fascists seemed like a fine thing to joke about in 1935, but on reconsideration in the late 1940s, not so much. Wigs on the Green was witty and good but not great.This one is great. At the outset of the war, Grace Allingham dumps her dull British fiancé and marries a handsome and charming French aristocrat who is with her only long enough to leave her expecting a baby, and then disappears for seven years to become a war hero. After the war they are reunited and move to France to raise their son. She tries to come to terms with French society and especially the French way of marriage.Grace’s love of France and the French, coupled with her difficulty of adjusting to French society and its mores, is heavily autobiographical; Mitford moved to France to be with the man with whom she fell in love during the war, Colonel Gaston Palewski, de Gaulle’s right hand man in London, and she never again lived in England. Palewski was serially unfaithful. (Nevermind that Nancy was still married to the man she’d married in the ‘30s; they were amicably separated and didn’t divorce until the late ‘50s.)Say this for Nancy Mitford: If you’re one of the famous Mitford sisters, much better to be the one the one that is known to have been enamored of the French, rather than one of those that fell in with German Nazis (Diana married Oswald Mosley and openly admired Hitler for many years after the war; Unity insinuated herself into the inner circle of Nazi high command and then shot herself in the head when the Germans lost), or the Soviets (Jessica was an enthusiastic Stalinist and party member nearly her whole life). I guess another one, mostly forgotten, was principally interested in horses, so that might also be fine.Speaking of Jessica (Decca) Mitford, the Commie one, her memoir of the Spanish Civil War and life in the American Communist Party (she moved to Oakland after marrying an American and spent the rest of her life there) titled A Fine Old Conflict (1977) is hilarious and fantastic.The Blessing is very funny and highly readable.Also recommended is the collection of Nancy’s letters with Evelyn Waugh.A final note: I usually read a book with a pen in my hand so that I can underline or bracket the pertinent bits for future reference or inclusion in the Old Rectory Newsletter, and to inscribe trenchant and enlightening marginalia like “haha” or “lol.” But as I was uncapping my Lamy upon starting this one, I paused for a moment for fear that it might be a first edition. I checked and in fact it was a first edition, a clean copy with intact dust jacket. I decided that I didn’t care and that I’d proceed to mark it up provided it was worth less than $50. So I looked it up and sadly they appear to sell for around $200. Not bad considering that I picked it up at a Friends of the Library book sale I don’t know when for $1.

[cindywho-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I picked this one from a metafilter list of happy books. It was a nice bit of dated fluff about wealthy folk in France and England just after WWII. Grace had impetuously married a charming Frenchman just before the war and 7 years later finally moves in with him and their son. All are wondering how she will react to his womanizing ways. I was surprised at the frank discussions about adultery and homosexuality that popped up here and there in mostly non-judgmental terms (oh so decadent!). Sometimes it dragged and the child was annoying, but was nice living in their cozy world of culture and parties and pretty dresses for a while.

[rubyscarlett-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

It does feel good to read another Nancy Mitford. Her style is easily spotted in a crowd, I find. Her wit is sharp, to the point, her characters unforgettable and The Blessing is no exception. Such eccentricity in one book, it's amazing how she does it without making it too cliché. I found the essentialist statements to be well below her usual standards (the constant French/English comparisons are frankly strange though it has a context at least) but on the other hand in one scene one of her best characters convinces another one that homosexuality is no worse or better than heterosexuality. I was bracing myself for the inevitable moment when it would be linked to misogyny (in a 'you see, men are so much superior to women, who can blame men for fancying other men' sort of way) but surprisingly enough it wasn't. Such an unexpected relief.

Overall an entertaining book, though not her best it's a good, fun story.

[baswood · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A book that was quite a success in 1951, which is frivolous and amusing, but I would prefer to read it as a social satire rather than a romance or celebration of the life of some very rich people. Nancy Mitford was a member of a privileged, well connected family and was at home in writing a novel about rich and privileged people; it is a world where the only poor people one might meet are the servants. Money and position is everything and to readers outside that social circle (which is the vast majority) it must appear like a sort of fantasy land. We all like to laugh at the "nobs" whose world in reality hardly touches ours. I laughed along with many readers of the book, but was always unsure how deep the satire was meant to penetrate.The novel tells the story of Grace Allingham's adventures in the marriage market. She falls in love with the Frenchman Charles-Edouard a charming cavalier of a man always wanting to move on to the next thing and a serial womaniser. After a whirlwind romance they are married and soon Grace is pregnant with her first child Sigi (the blessing). Grace is happily married and enjoys the high society life in Paris and turns a blind eye to her husbands dalliances with other women. Charles-Edouard's continual absence from home starts to annoy her and when she catches him in bed with another woman who she believed was a childhood friend, she leaves him and returns to her family home in England. Sigi is a resourceful child of seven years and he discovers that living with both parents, one in France the other in England for an agreed portion of the year; he gets the best of both worlds and the second part of the novel are his increasingly desperate attempts to keep his mother and father apart.The most obvious satire is the difference between the French, the English and the Americans. Francophiles will love this book, Americans perhaps not so much. Paris high society according to the novel soon gets back to how things were before the second world war. rationing, food shortages hardly get a mention, all is light and glamour and the whirl of Parisian life and the charm of the chateaus in the countryside is compared to the crabby lifestyle in England. Grace loves the culture, the good manners, the more modern approach to love and sex and the conversations around the banqueting tables. Grace's American friend in Paris; Carolyn Dexter is not so enamoured, finding it difficult to get into the society and appalled by the less than sanitary arrangements. Grace's nanny finds the garlicky food inedible and keeps young Sigi away from the horrible rough french children. The charming energetic Charles-Edouard is everything that a man with privilege and money can be in free wheeling society in Paris. Grace is willing to forgive him almost everything because of her own position as his wife, his charm and success reflects on her and that is enough for her. This message comes through loud and clear in a book which might not be in tune with more 21st century thinking. Grace does assert her independence to the extent that she can afford to go back to her father Sir Conrad, but it is only the machinations of Sigi that keeps her away from Charles-Edouard. Nancy Mitford's prose flows nicely throughout the book, her characters are well drawn and are not lampooned to the extent that they are unbelievable. They sometimes do crazy things, but then they are rich enough to get away with it. They certainly do nothing to harm their own position, but how light can it be, I asked myself, should I be enchanted by their lifestyles. The novel has some funny moments and never fails to amuse, light. frothy entertainment with satire pitched at a level that rarely gets below the surface. Nancy Mitford moved to Paris in 1946 and became a firm francophile and this is certainly reflected in her novel and so as an ex-pat myself I give it three stars.

[spiralsheep · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

64/2020. I found the first two-thirds somewhat dull scene-setting but can't criticise the quality of prose or pacing, and there are occasional enjoyable one-liners to enliven proceedings. After the Blessing, seven year old Sigismond, comes into his own as a character then more entertaining society shenanigans ensue in the final third. The senior Mistress, Albertine Marel-Desboulles, is by far the most interesting character, although I would also cheerfully read a novel about any of the Aunts.Reading notesBunbury Park will never stop being amusing, obviously.Nanny, during the war, with her best complaint of the book: "If he'd had been called after his father he could have been Charlie, or Eddy, but Sigi - ! Well, I don't care to say it in the street, makes people look round." Thank you comrade Nancy: "They could not be the clever girls they were without seeing life a little bit through Marx-coloured spectacles"