A review by sophiahelix
Christmas at Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons

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.