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gengelcox's review against another edition
3.0
Through the late 1900s and into the 20th century, English novelists were full of woeful tales chronicling the sad fall of gentry from affluence to poverty. Stories like [a:Jane Austen|1265|Jane Austen|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1380085320p2/1265.jpg]’s [b:Pride and Prejudice|1885|Pride and Prejudice|Jane Austen|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1320399351s/1885.jpg|3060926] joined the work of Charlotte and Emily Bronte, entertaining the turn of the century reader with these melodramatic tales. By the 1920s, when some had thought this trend had passed, it moved into another phase, with pulp paperbacks filled with lurid descriptions and the purplish prose imaginable. Stella Gibbons in 1932 attempted an emergency rescue, and succeeded wonderfully with her novel, Cold Comfort Farm, recently re-released to coincide with a new movie version by director John Schlesinger.
Flora Poste is the recently orphaned waif who finds it necessary to impose herself on some body of relatives. Her meager inheritance of 100 pounds a year is not enough “keep you in stockings and fans,” as her good friend Mrs. Smiling remarks. She writes to several distant family members and receives three replies. Most of them are appalling, except for the one from her cousin Judith Starkadder, which is, at least, interesting and appalling. She writes back and accepts the offer of boarding from Cold Comfort Farm, to find out what “rights” she has that cousin Judith mysteriously refers to. Her arrival at Cold Comfort begins a warming trend that ends up firing up every Starkadder in sight, including: Amos, the hellfire-and-brimstone owner of the farm and preacher to the Quivering Brethern; Reuben, his son and would-be caretaker of Cold Comfort; Seth, the hunk-a-hunk-a burning love that has terrorized the female countryside, to his mother’s extreme shame; the flighty Elfine, who whisks around in ethereal garments quoting her own poetry; and the matriarch who rules Cold Comfort Farm with a iron fist, Aunt Ada Doom, who saw something “nasty in the woodshed” when she was a little girl, and who hasn’t left Cold Comfort Farm since.
Gibbons is artfully playing on the conventions of the melodrama, and it helps the reader to be familiar with the work of [a:Thomas Hardy|15905|Thomas Hardy|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1429946281p2/15905.jpg] or [a:Jane Austen|1265|Jane Austen|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1380085320p2/1265.jpg] to fully appreciate some of the playful work here. Without this meta-nature, Cold Comfort Farm would be amusing, but not nearly as effective. For modern readers, this is one novel that has weathered the intervening sixty years well, due in some part to Gibbons deft touch with her satire, but also her clear, readable style when not trying to out-purple the purple prose-wizards of the melodramas.
This is the perfect novel for those book-weary high-school students still suffering under the weighty tomes of “literature” that is force-fed to them by our assembly-factory education system. A good dose of parody, a kind of 1930s National Lampoon, should help them feel better about books, and literature in general.
Flora Poste is the recently orphaned waif who finds it necessary to impose herself on some body of relatives. Her meager inheritance of 100 pounds a year is not enough “keep you in stockings and fans,” as her good friend Mrs. Smiling remarks. She writes to several distant family members and receives three replies. Most of them are appalling, except for the one from her cousin Judith Starkadder, which is, at least, interesting and appalling. She writes back and accepts the offer of boarding from Cold Comfort Farm, to find out what “rights” she has that cousin Judith mysteriously refers to. Her arrival at Cold Comfort begins a warming trend that ends up firing up every Starkadder in sight, including: Amos, the hellfire-and-brimstone owner of the farm and preacher to the Quivering Brethern; Reuben, his son and would-be caretaker of Cold Comfort; Seth, the hunk-a-hunk-a burning love that has terrorized the female countryside, to his mother’s extreme shame; the flighty Elfine, who whisks around in ethereal garments quoting her own poetry; and the matriarch who rules Cold Comfort Farm with a iron fist, Aunt Ada Doom, who saw something “nasty in the woodshed” when she was a little girl, and who hasn’t left Cold Comfort Farm since.
Gibbons is artfully playing on the conventions of the melodrama, and it helps the reader to be familiar with the work of [a:Thomas Hardy|15905|Thomas Hardy|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1429946281p2/15905.jpg] or [a:Jane Austen|1265|Jane Austen|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1380085320p2/1265.jpg] to fully appreciate some of the playful work here. Without this meta-nature, Cold Comfort Farm would be amusing, but not nearly as effective. For modern readers, this is one novel that has weathered the intervening sixty years well, due in some part to Gibbons deft touch with her satire, but also her clear, readable style when not trying to out-purple the purple prose-wizards of the melodramas.
This is the perfect novel for those book-weary high-school students still suffering under the weighty tomes of “literature” that is force-fed to them by our assembly-factory education system. A good dose of parody, a kind of 1930s National Lampoon, should help them feel better about books, and literature in general.
athenalindia's review against another edition
4.0
A quick easy book as I'm nearing the end of the BBC's Big Read. Down to fewer than ten books to go, now. This particular list has been something I've been slowly working my way through for the last three or four years, and the end is in sight. I thoroughly enjoyed this entry. It's light but amusing, with entertaining commentary on other literature. I finished it quickly, and have taken a while to get to the review, as I had one weekend two weekends ago where I finished five books. I'm almost caught up.
Note: The rest of this review has been withdrawn due to the changes in Goodreads policy and enforcement. You can read why I came to this decision here.
In the meantime, you can read the entire review at Smorgasbook
Note: The rest of this review has been withdrawn due to the changes in Goodreads policy and enforcement. You can read why I came to this decision here.
In the meantime, you can read the entire review at Smorgasbook
peytonm's review against another edition
5.0
I love rereading this book. Flora is a great heroine who enters her cousins' lives and improves them. Then she goes about improving her own with a romantic ending!
sophiahelix's review against another edition
3.0
Enjoyable, but a little uneven in tone -- I kept wanting it to be sharper and tighter in the satirical bits, or commit more whole-heartedly to the romantic ones. I laughed at several funny lines of commentary and parodical passages of Victorian/Bronte literature, but Gibbons also made an odd effort to keep the book "timeless," with references to non-existent technology and wars, whereas I wanted to sink into 1930s deliciousness. Usually with a good book/movie pairing there are strengths on both sides, but other than some very wry and incisive asides about Mr. Mybug and "intellectual" men, there's almost nothing in the book that wasn't done as well or better in the movie. Which I feel like a Philistine for saying, and I probably would have loved the book if I'd read it first (instead of seeing the movie at a young age), but there it is.
errrick's review against another edition
3.0
I didn't love this, I didn't hate. I'm not familiar enough with the works it parodies to get those jokes. I don't think it's any fault of the author, I just wasn't the best audience for this one.
manogirl's review against another edition
3.0
What an odd little book. I didn't NOT enjoy it, and I'm not sorry I read it, but the whole time I was reading it, I thought something was missing. I think what's missing is that this is a parody of an entire genre I've never read. I imagine it's quite funny if you've got a grounding in whatever the hell Gibbons is parodying.
That said, I did laugh out loud a couple of times, which...was a delightful surprise.
That said, I did laugh out loud a couple of times, which...was a delightful surprise.
katrinamiddelburg's review against another edition
5.0
Oh my goodness, where has this delightful book been all my life! I laughed out loud so many times while reading this. It is witty, eloquent and a deft satire of a specific brand of "rural literature" that I was forced to read so much of in college. (D.H. Lawrence, I'm looking at you here.) This is going on my yearly re-read pile and I will heretofore attempt to address every problem facing me with the question : "What would Flora do?"
martinisandcake's review against another edition
4.0
Love love love it. The perfect (and more fun!) answer to Jane Austen's Emma.
kates's review against another edition
5.0
Ahhhh. It's so satisfying to read a new book and know by the end that it's one you'll return to again and again!
Stella Gibbons wrote Cold Comfort Farm in the 1930's as a satire of the overblown pastoral novels that were then in vogue, but her real target was grandiloquent self-satisfied Serious Literature-ish writing of the kind that, it seems, will never die. Its continuing currency means that the novel's humor is as fresh as ever--Gibbons was essentially mocking the MFA novel before the MFA novel was even a twinkle in a writing workshop's eye.
The contrast between the unflappably charming protagonist Flora and pretty much everyone she encounters at the Farm is another wonderful source of humor. And the plot, defiantly fantastical, gives both Flora and Gibbons the space to work their magic.
Some of my favorite quotes from Cold Comfort Farm:
"The firelight lit up his diaphragm muscles as they heaved slowly in rough rhythm with the porridge."
----------------
"Flora was so startled at being addressed in a respectful and normal manner by anyone in Sussex that she nearly forgot to answer."
----------------
"'Hullo, Flora Poste. Do you believe that women have souls?' And there he was, standing above her and looking down at her with a bold yet whimsical smile.
"Flora was not surprised at being asked this question. She knew that intellectuals, like Mr Kipling's Bi-coloured Python-Rock-Snake, always talked like this. So she replied pleasantly, but from her heart: 'I am afraid I'm not very interested.'"
----------------
"High up, a few chalky clouds doubtfully wavered in the pale sky that curved over the rim of the Downs like a vast inverted pot-de-chambre."
Stella Gibbons wrote Cold Comfort Farm in the 1930's as a satire of the overblown pastoral novels that were then in vogue, but her real target was grandiloquent self-satisfied Serious Literature-ish writing of the kind that, it seems, will never die. Its continuing currency means that the novel's humor is as fresh as ever--Gibbons was essentially mocking the MFA novel before the MFA novel was even a twinkle in a writing workshop's eye.
The contrast between the unflappably charming protagonist Flora and pretty much everyone she encounters at the Farm is another wonderful source of humor. And the plot, defiantly fantastical, gives both Flora and Gibbons the space to work their magic.
Some of my favorite quotes from Cold Comfort Farm:
"The firelight lit up his diaphragm muscles as they heaved slowly in rough rhythm with the porridge."
----------------
"Flora was so startled at being addressed in a respectful and normal manner by anyone in Sussex that she nearly forgot to answer."
----------------
"'Hullo, Flora Poste. Do you believe that women have souls?' And there he was, standing above her and looking down at her with a bold yet whimsical smile.
"Flora was not surprised at being asked this question. She knew that intellectuals, like Mr Kipling's Bi-coloured Python-Rock-Snake, always talked like this. So she replied pleasantly, but from her heart: 'I am afraid I'm not very interested.'"
----------------
"High up, a few chalky clouds doubtfully wavered in the pale sky that curved over the rim of the Downs like a vast inverted pot-de-chambre."
pageturner92's review against another edition
2.0
I really expected to like this and find it a relatively easy classic but I had to DNF it about 20% in. From what I did read, it was far too silly to be likeable and I was bored.