The Trick of It
by Michael Frayn | 
Rule Britannia
by Daphne Du Maurier | 
Therapy
by David Lodge | 
Wish You Were Here
by Graham Swift | 
The House of Sleep
by Jonathan Coe | 
Metroland
by Julian Barnes | 
Paradise Postponed
by John Mortimer | 
Walking Across Egypt
by Clyde Edgerton | 
Love Monkey
by Kyle Smith | 
The Hundred Brothers
by Donald Antrim | 
Paradise News
by David Lodge | 
Eating People is Wrong
by Malcolm Bradbury | 
Home Truths
by David Lodge | 
The Closed Circle
by Jonathan Coe | 
Duluth
by Gore Vidal | 
Pigeon Pie
by Nancy Mitford | 
Post Office
by Charles Bukowski | 
Vineland
by Thomas Pynchon | 
Crampton Hodnet
by Barbara Pym | 
Something Happened
by Joseph Heller |
With characteristically amusing malice, Mitford blends a comedy of manners with culture shock as Grace Allingham, a naive English rose, impulsively marries Charles-Edouard de Valhubert, a French nobleman with all his class's charm and decadence. Both are duped, however, by their son Sigismund -- the Blessing of the title -- a juvenile Machiavelli who mixes Gallic cunning with Saxon thoroughness to become one of Mitford's most memorable characters.