Cold Comfort Farm (Classic, 20th-Century, Penguin) by Stella Gibbons Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Cold Comfort Farm (Classic, 20th-Century, Penguin)
Book Review: Jane Austens Heart + Oscar Wildes Brain
Summary: 4 Stars
Stella Gibbons's "Cold Comfort Farm" is a very intereting effort, despite some problems. The novel reads like a mix between Austen countryside prose and Wilde's cinism and desbilef, that made the book very interesting, but, on the hand, its characters are very shallow and monodimensional.When Flora losts her parents, she seeks any relative who can support her. The only family who accepts the girl are the Starkadder, who happen to live in the Cold Comfort Farm, hence the title. They are quite a family. Any of them has his/her problems, limitation and interests. Flora goes to live with than and she [can you guess?] changes everybody's lives, even the farm's.
Gibbons's prose is fluent and interesting. The story, despite its previsibility, keeps the reader interested. The characters, as I aforementioned, are very monodimensional, ie, they are more types the human beings, like, the Sad Aunt, the Naive Cousin.... nevertheless, they are good to spend some hours with. Flora, the protagonist, is the more interesting, but and she suffers some changer through the narrative, but very smoothy ones. In the end, she is not very different from the girl she is the begining.
The title is very interesting and self-explianable: in that farm, Flora finds some comfort, but this is still a cold place due to the weird people that live there. The farm can be read as a metaphor of the world and the some kind of people one may find, but even then, the author is a bit naive. Her world is too easy to live and the problems too easy to solve. Real life is a bit different.
All in all, it is a funny reading. Despite being a bit of Austen and a bit of Wilde, this novel isn't close to any of their work. Anyway, it is worth reading for people who like an easy and sometimes interesting prose.
Book Review: My favourite book: Funny, clever and brilliant.
Summary: 5 Stars
I can't tell you how many times I've read Cold Comfort Farm but everytime I do I can't help but laugh out loud and enjoy it just as much as the first time I read it. It is the story of expensively educated Flora Poste, whose parents die when she is only 20. Rather than make a living for herself by working she decides to foist herself onto her relatives at Cold Comfort Farm in Sussex. The Starkadders are a decidedly odd bunch consisting of; Aunt Ada Doom who saw "something nasty in the woodshed" when she was two and is assumed to be mad, Judith, alone with her grief, Amos, called by God to preach of hellfire and damnation, Seth smoldering with sex and obsessed with the 'talkies', Elfine who runs wild in the woods and the fields, and other crazy characters. Flora feels it is her duty to bring order into this chaos and to tidy the lives of these uncivilised relatives as she is an excessively tidy person and dislikes a mess.
Stella Gibbon's novel is charming, incredibly funny and parodies the earthy, melodramatic novels (Thomas Hardy and D.H Lawrence et al) of the period extremely well. It is a must read and shall remain my favourite book for many years to come.
If you want to see one of the tv adaptations of the novel I would recommend the version starring Kate Beskinsale as the best.
Book Review: Outstanding Wit
Summary: 5 Stars
Cold Comfort Farm is a superbly written parody of the typical 1900's novel of English country life. Flora after being educated and raised in comfortable affluence finds upon the death of her father she is pennyless. After much deliberation and advice to the contrary from her friends she decides to become a parasite on her relatives. Her relatives the Stackadders are a strange collection living on Cold Comfort Farm deep in rural england ruled by an old woman who once saw "something nasty in the woodshed." Flora intrudes and moves the stackadders lives firmly into the 1900's. A brilliant satire that is so rich in description and humor that you appreciate more each time you read it.Book Review: Pure Delight!
Summary: 5 Stars
Cold Comfort Farm is a hilarious parody on the sometimes overwrought, back-to-nature styles of D.H. Lawrence and Thomas Hardy. But dont be put off if you are not familiar with these authors. If you have ever had a giggle or two about a steamy bodice-ripper or an author who goes on and on---- and on with descriptions of the morning dew, the heaving ocean, and the joys of primitivism; Cold Comfort Farm is a perfect antidote.Orphaned, genteel, and somewhat financially embarrassed Flora Poste decides to spend a year living off some carefully selected relatives. Though her worldly, soignée London friends are appalled at her choice, Flora has her reasons. She plans to make herself indispensable to her god-forsaken, rural extended family who reside in Howling, Sussex at Cold Comfort Farm. The Howling, Sussex branch has unforgettable characters such as over-sexed Seth, fragile free-spirited Elfie who scampers over the moors in a scarlet cape, Amos who is called by God and a Ford Motor Van, and Great Aunt Ada Doom who saw something nasty in the woodshed and has been afflicted ever since.
Not only is Cold Comfort Farm funny and sly, it is curiously comforting for Flora succeeds famously in exactly what she set out to do. She never takes a misstep or loses her fastidious equanimity. I found there has been a movie made of the book in 1995, and I have it on order. If it is half as funny as the book, it will be a wild success. A wonderful read and highly recommended.
Book Review: QUIRKY AND BRILLIANT...A HILARIOUS PARODY...
Summary: 5 Stars
Published in 1932, this novel is a hysterically funny, tongue in cheek parody of the heavy handed, gloomy novels of some early twentieth century English writers who had previously been so popular. Tremendously successful when first published, "Cold Comfort Farm" caused quite a stir in its time.
The novel starts out innocuosly enough, when well educated Flora Poste finds herself orphaned at the age of twenty. Discovering that her father was not the wealthy man she believed him to be, she is resigned to the fate of having to live on a hundred pounds a year. Opting to live with relatives, rather than earn her bread, she seeks out a most unlikely set of relations, the odd Starkadder family who live in Howling, Sussex.
Therein begins what is certainly one of the funniest novels ever written. When Flora arrives in Howling, she meets her odd relatives, who live in neglected, ramshackle "Cold Comfort Farm", where they still wash the dishes with twigs, and have cows named Graceless, Pointless, Feckless, and Aimless. Headed by a seventy nine year old matriarch, Flora's aunt, Ada Doom Starkadder, who has not been right in the head since she "saw something nasty happen in the woodshed" nearly seventy years ago, they are a motley and strange crew indeed. Confronted with their dismal and gloomy existence, Flora sets about trying to put things to right.
Peppered with eccentric, memorable characters, this book will take the reader on a journey not easily forgotten. It is one that is sure to make the reader revisit this novel yet again, like an old friend who is missed too soon.