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| Author: Stella Gibbons
Creators: Roz Chast, Lynne Truss
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Category: Book
List Price: $15.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  8 reviews
Sales Rank: 35256
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 256
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8.4 x 5.6 x 0.9
ISBN: 0143039598
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.912
EAN: 9780143039594
ASIN: 0143039598
Publication Date: March 28, 2006
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| Showing reviews 6-8 of 8 | | « PREV | | |
SOMETHING NASTY HAPPENED IN THE WOODSHED... July 16, 2006
12 out of 12 found this review helpful
First 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 innocuously 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.
Satirical, Sardonic look at the English Novel in Cold Comfort Farm July 14, 2006
20 out of 20 found this review helpful
Every now and then, usually when life gets a bit too stressful, I need a good belly laugh. And if an author can do it in a clever fashion, then all the better. Such was the case with Stella Gibbon's Cold Comfort Farm.
Written in 1932, and set in "the near future," it's the story of the Starkadder family and what happens when they have a run in with the determined Flora Poste. Flora is one of those heroines who is decidedly cheerful, and very intent on fixing up other peoples messes and untidiness. Forced with the decision to either throw herself on the mercy of some relations goodwill to take her in, or (horrors!) get a job, Flora writes to the various relations that she has in search of a home after the demise of her parents. In exchange, Flora will hand over her slight inheritance of a hundred pounds a year.
And it seems the only relations who do want her are the Starkadders, off in the downs of Sussex. Flora is imagining a tidy home farm. What she gets is a set of cranky, eccentric if not outright insane, cousins, with the ringleader, Aunt Ada Doom in the middle of it all. There is the son of Ada, Amos Starkadder, who runs the farm, but spends Tuesday nights off preaching fire and brimstone to the Brethren; his wife Judith who worships her youngest and views the world as perpetual misery and just wishes that everyone would leave her alone. Pretty Elfine, all of seventeen, spends her days running wild and imagining herself a dryad, twigs and leaves included. And then there are the boys, most notably, Reuben, who loves farming, but Amos doesn't trust him, and Seth, an oversexed, hunk of manhood who seems to have nothing but sex on the brain, but the reality is much more interesting. And then the ancient, muttering Adam, who 'cletters' the dishes with thorny twigs.
In short, Flora has all sorts of interesting projects at hand, and it's a task that she falls to with glee with great practicality and not a little cunning on her part. It's a mad riot of a novel, generously slathered with wicked parodies of the overwrought prose of D.H. Lawrence and Thomas Hardy, asides to the writing of Gaskell and a great withering jab at the Brontes. For anyone who has survived a university level course in nineteenth century English lit, it's the perfect antidote to the general depression that follows such a course, and it's worth it.
Asute readers will note that Flora blithely goes about her mission of improving everyone's lives and being a dreadful snob about it. It takes a little while to realize that Gibbons is making fun of her heroine just as much as she is of the popular novels of the time. Flora never quite seems to see the chaos that she is spreading about in her wake as she goes about her tidying, and assumes that she is 'doing the right thing.'
From the names of the farm's herd of cows -- Aimless, Feckless, Graceless and Pointless and the stud bull, Big Business -- to the real intent and mystery of Aunt Ada, who saw something nasty in the woodshed, it's a grand read of a book. You'll find yourself giggling over the descriptions, the sly wit, and the oft-times ridiculous situations that arise in this tale of a tormented family. I enjoyed myself immensely, and found it vastly entertaining and worth it to mend the blues for an evening.
It's not a very long book, just under 240 pages, and if you can, find the new release from Penguin Books, with a new introduction by Lynne Truss, and a delightful cover by artist Roz Chast. There have been several film versions of this one made, most notably with Kate Beckensale as Flora, and I urge anyone who hasn't read the book to do so. You'll never look at English Literature in quite the same way again.
 Very cold comfort April 15, 2006
12 out of 13 found this review helpful
"There have always been Starkadders at Cold Comfort Farm."
That rather ominous announcement sets the tone for "Cold Comfort Tale," a slyly comic tale about a modern young woman who decides to "tidy up" a backward Sussex farm. Gibbons' deft sense of humour and entertaining characters bring alive what could have been just another coming-of-age novel.
Young Flora Poste unexpectedly finds herself orphaned, with only a tiny yearly allowance. But instead of getting a job and apartment, she decides to go live with relatives, so she can get life experience, tidy up, and make life nice and orderly. After a few vetos, Flora decides to go to Cold Comfort Farm, a "doomed house" whose inhabitants feel they owe a debt to her.
When she arrives, she finds a clan of inbred Sussex hillbillies, including her grimly religious uncle, depressed aunt, "highly sexed" cousins, a very fertile farm girl, and the crazed matriarch, Aunt Ada Doom, who "saw something nasty in the woodshed." Even worse, a pompous writer is infatuated with her. But Flora is determined to make things orderly, and so she begins changing Cold Comfort Farm...
It takes a really good writer to straddle the line between spoofery and a serious book. Stella Gibbons was one such writer, and like Anita Loos, she was happy to eye everything humorously: the idle wealthy (Mary Smiling and her bra collection), people who live in squalor and hate it, but aren't willing to change (the Farm inhabitants), and even intellectuals ("Do you believe women have souls?"). Even the livestock gets funny names like Feckless, Graceless and Arsenic.
For the most part, "Cold Comfort Farm" does seem orderly and tidy -- Flora drags it into the 20th century, sends people off to better lives, and arranges marriages, including one for her fey cousin to a young aristocrat. The only flaw is the ending: Gibbons never tells us what Flora's "rights" are, what Aunt Ada saw, or what happened with Flora's dad.
At first, Flora comes across as rather manipulative and shallow. The odd thing is, as the book progresses, we see that Flora's liking for tidiness is essentially good-hearted. Like one of Jane Austen's heroines, she does these things not just for herself, but for their sakes as well -- she wants a "happily-ever-after" for everybody, including the mad matriarch, her womanizing cousin, and fire-and-brimstone uncle.
This edition is a particularly nice one, with a whimsical cartoony cover that suits the tone of the book very well, and an interesting foreword by Lynn Truss, who knows a few things about tidiness, order, and humorous language herself.
While the ending of the book is not as tidy and orderly as I'd hoped, "Cold Comfort Farm" is still an entertainingly wry novel -- call it a comedy of improving manners.
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