Customer Reviews

The Bachelor

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Stella Gibbons is most famous for Cold Comfort Farm (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition), which was made into a movie (Cold Comfort Farm). This is a tale with a slightly lower-key version of her very dry, quirky humor. Set in England during World War II, it is reminiscent of Jane Austen in not really being about the momentous events going on at the time, but is rather a comedy of manners about how people cope with life - that it happens to be during this particular time merely sets some of the details.

The tale begins with the invasion of Bairama, a fictitious mountainous Eastern European country comprising a pastiche of all the motifs familiar to that region - proud, ferocious mountaineers who seem to be a unique amalgam of Muslim and Eastern Orthodox Christianity. Prior to the invasion, Varhouti Annamatti has gone to England as a refugee and goes to work at rural house occupied by a middle-aged brother and sister.

The book sends up a number of the intellectual trends of the time. (And this time as well.) The sister's ardent internationalism (she feels that it is her duty to ignore the unfortunate unpleasantness, i.e. WWII), supplies a great deal of the humor, especially her attempt to force her unfortunate associates into putting on the play "Little Frimdl and the Peace Reindeer". Her cousin, meanwhile, prides himself on being a socialist with an aristocratic upbringing.

The sister, apparently a xenophilic aunt of Hyacinth Bucket of "Keeping up Appearances", is so self-centered as to be unable to understand that she is selfish, and tyrannizes her brother and a variety of relations who move through the house during the story. Except Varhouti. The resulting clash turns their lives upside down.

This may not be for everyone - one does have to be able to appreciate Gibbons' decidedly off-beat amd irreverant humor, but I found it extremely funny.