BOTW: what a family!

Marie Benedict's latest novel again tells the story of women whose names we may know but whose lives we don't know much about.

Aristocratic, glamorous, on the verge of going broke -- the Mitford family could have been dreamed up by a satirical novelist except that they were very real. (And, actually, eldest daughter Nancy did thinly-disguise her siblings in two of her novels.) Diana, the second daughter, divorced her husband (heir to Guinness brewing) to marry Oswald Mosely, head of the British Union of Fascists. Unity, the third daughter, was enamored by Adolf Hitler and became part of his inner circle. (Brother Tom and sisters Pamela, Jessica, and Deborah led somewhat less sensational lives. The senior Mitfords, called Muv and Favre by their children, vacillated between genteel almost-poverty, hatred of the "Huns," and admiration for Moseley's BUF.)

Marie Benedict focuses on Nancy, Diana, and Unity.  Nancy's first-person account shows her trying unsuccessfully to talk sense into Diana, Unity, Muv, and Favre, dealing with her ineffectual alcoholic husband and her childlessness, and trying to make a living with her writing. Diana and Unity's stories are told in the third person. Diana uses Unity's connection to Hitler to strengthen her marriage to Moseley. Unity fancies herself a bridge between Germany and Great Britain, not realizing that Hitler is exploiting her just as he exploits everyone in his quest to conquer the world.

Nancy's story concludes: "How personal is the political in the end, I think. It turns each one of us into the authors of our own histories, we become patriots and heroes and, where necessary, spies and traitors. Which one of these, I wonder, am I?" (p.395)