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A review by tasharobinson
Nightingale Wood by Stella Gibbons
5.0
What a charming book. From the author of Cold Comfort Farm, this is the 400-page romantic drama version of that book's 125-page satirical comedy. Both books are about young women in early 1900s Britian forced by circumstances to go live with tiresome relatives in dismal, distant country settings after getting used to lively city lives. Both of these protagonists have flashy female friends who represent freedom, youth, and modernity, and who buck them up with advice from afar.
But Viola in Nightingale Wood is a widow at 21, moving in with her late husband's dreary family, while dreaming of being swept away by the rich and dashing young man in the great house up the hill. It's pretty clear from the moment she first fantasizes about him from afar where this book is eventually leading, so the fun would theoretically be in getting there — except that the two of them are by far the plainest and least interesting characters in the book. They're surrounded by more colorful friends and family members who have bigger and more heartfelt ambitions.
While we spend a fair amount of time in Viola's soppy, simple point of view (Gibbons constantly emphasizes that she isn't particularly clever, or vivacious, or charming, and that her chief attractions are being pretty, not very assertive, and more than a bit vague and blank), the best parts of the story are about everyone else. Not nearly as funny or ridiculously over-the-top as Cold Comfort Farm, but just as lively and sly, this winds up being a really absorbing read. Where Cold Comfort felt like a wry parody of a certain kind of British comedy of manners (with a fair bit of Emma layered in), this feels more like a satire of the British class system and snobbery itself, with a fair bit of humor at and dismissal of the difference between classes, no great affection for aristocrats and the well-bred, and basically enough Dickensian dismissal of everyone's foibles to go around. It's affectionate more than sour, and pretty much a fairy tale as well as a romance, but it's fun reading and extremely well-written.
But Viola in Nightingale Wood is a widow at 21, moving in with her late husband's dreary family, while dreaming of being swept away by the rich and dashing young man in the great house up the hill. It's pretty clear from the moment she first fantasizes about him from afar where this book is eventually leading, so the fun would theoretically be in getting there — except that the two of them are by far the plainest and least interesting characters in the book. They're surrounded by more colorful friends and family members who have bigger and more heartfelt ambitions.
While we spend a fair amount of time in Viola's soppy, simple point of view (Gibbons constantly emphasizes that she isn't particularly clever, or vivacious, or charming, and that her chief attractions are being pretty, not very assertive, and more than a bit vague and blank), the best parts of the story are about everyone else. Not nearly as funny or ridiculously over-the-top as Cold Comfort Farm, but just as lively and sly, this winds up being a really absorbing read. Where Cold Comfort felt like a wry parody of a certain kind of British comedy of manners (with a fair bit of Emma layered in), this feels more like a satire of the British class system and snobbery itself, with a fair bit of humor at and dismissal of the difference between classes, no great affection for aristocrats and the well-bred, and basically enough Dickensian dismissal of everyone's foibles to go around. It's affectionate more than sour, and pretty much a fairy tale as well as a romance, but it's fun reading and extremely well-written.