Cold Comfort Farm (Classic, 20th-Century, Penguin) [Mass Market Paperback]

Stella Gibbons (Author)

Book Description

Series: Classic, 20th-Century, Penguin | Publication Date: February 1, 1996

Flora Poste, orphaned at twenty, decides to go and live with her relatives at Cold Comfort Farm. Once there she discovers they exist in a state of chaos and feels it is up to her to bring order. From the author of LIGHT AND EASY.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

In Gibbons's classic tale, first published in 1932, a resourceful young heroine finds herself in the gloomy, overwrought world of a Hardy or Bronte novel and proceeds to organize everyone out of their romantic tragedies into the pleasures of normal life. Flora Poste, orphaned at 19, chooses to live with relatives at Cold Comfort Farm in Sussex, where cows are named Feckless, Aimless, Pointless, and Graceless, and the proprietors, the dour Starkadder family, are tyrannized by Flora's mysterious aunt, who controls the household from a locked room. Flora's confident and clever management of an alarming cast of eccentrics is only half the pleasure of this novel. The other half is Gibbons's wicked sendup of romantic cliches, from the mad woman in the attic to the druidical peasants with their West Country accents and mystical herbs. Anne Massey's skillful rendering of a variety of accents will make this story more accessible to American audiences. Recommended for both literary and popular collections.
- Sharon Cumberland, Graduate Ctr., CUNY
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

Winner of the 1933 Femina Vie Heureuse Prize, Cold Comfort Farm is a witty, irreverent parody of the works of Thomas Hardy and D.H. Lawrence. Flora Poste, left an orphan at the end of her "expensive, athletic, and prolonged" education, sets off for her relatives at Cold Comfort Farm, despite dire warnings of doom and damnation. Once there she encounters Seth, full of rampant sexuality; Elfine, who flits in and out in a cloak that is decidedly the wrong color; Meriam, the hired girl who gets pregnant every year when the "sukebind is in bloom;" and Aunt Ada Doom, the aging, reclusive matriarch who once "saw something nasty in the woodshed." Flora decides to "tidy up life at Cold Comfort Farm." Mocking Hardy's and Lawrence's melodrama, sensuality, and use of symbolism, Stella Gibbons has Flora, with her no-nonsense attitude, give Elfine a good haircut, teach Meriam some elementary lessons in birth control and send various morose, rural relatives off to happier fates. Cold Comfort Farm is funny even without a background in Hardy or Lawrence, but for those readers who have been frustrated attempting to find exactly where in Tess of the D'Urbervilles Tess is "seduced," or who have plowed through the intensity of Sons and Lovers, Cold Comfort Farm is sweet, hilarious revenge. -- For great reviews of books for girls, check out Let's Hear It for the Girls: 375 Great Books for Readers 2-14. -- From 500 Great Books by Women; review by Erica Bauermeister

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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
  
• Mass Market Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Classics (February 1, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 014018869X
• ISBN-13: 978-0140188691
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.1 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (62 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #137,617 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

41 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A "slapstick" novel of manners?, September 3, 2003

By 

bensmomma "bensmomma" (Ann Arbor, Michigan) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Cold Comfort Farm (Classic, 20th-Century, Penguin) (Mass Market Paperback)

Could there be such a thing as a "slapstick" novel of manners? This one might qualify, for its humour both witty and broad and its country-house setting.

Our highly-educated heroine Flora Poste, intelligent, witty, but fashion-addled, aimless, and seemingly shallow, descends on her rural relatives when her parents die leaving her penniless. Sharp parodies of rural England, the family includes, among others, an insane matriarch locked in her room, a love-mad and graceless granddaughter, a grandson who plays the same role among the maids that the bull does among the cows, an antique manservant who fails to notice when a cow's leg falls off. In short order Flora contrives to marry off the granddaughter to a local grandee, packs the grandson off to Hollywood, and generally manages things so craftily that everyone not only lives Happily Ever After but also does so with Good Manners and better haircuts.

The most winning feature of Gibbon's book (after the fact that it is hysterically funny) is that she skewers not only the conventions of the 1930s upper classes to which Flora belongs, but also the working class denizens of the farm. At first everyone seems faintly ridiculous but over time your affections for ALL these characters grows. By the end you are actually happy to see them all happily settled, and Flora no longer seems like a conniver but a clever and sympathetic heroine-more Elizabeth Bennet than Becky Sharpe. A very neat trick on the part of the author, and one well worth the discovering.

One miniscule note of caution: Gibbons, writing in the 1930s, sets her novel "in the near future," and adds a couple of futuristic features that confuse the casual reader-telephones with televisions in them so you can see the speaker, references to the "Anglo-Nicaraguan War" and the like. You may safely ignore them without diminishing the book.

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A brilliant, affectionate book, April 19, 2004

By 

Bruce F. Webster "geek in a suit" (Parker, CO USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: Cold Comfort Farm (Classic, 20th-Century, Penguin) (Mass Market Paperback)

Parody is easy to do but hard to sustain or do well, and almost always done as an end it itself--the author saying, "See how wicked and clever I am, and how silly the thing I'm mocking is!" Gibbons' genius is that she while she pokes fun at specific genres and authors (including herself), she actually writes a complete (and well-done) novel, and she treats the characters with affection and a certain dignity. The result is a book that's not only clever, funny, and well-written, but that is also unexpectedly, in the end, sweet and romantic.

For those wondering, the 1995 film adaptation (available on DVD right here on Amazon) is remarkably faithful (with understandable trimming, folding and tucking), and likewise hilarious without ever being mean spirited. Both have my highest recommendation. ..bruce..

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A brilliant book, September 29, 2000

By 

Suzanne Sanderson (Mercer Island, WA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Cold Comfort Farm (Classic, 20th-Century, Penguin) (Mass Market Paperback)

Not long before she died, I wrote to Stella Gibbons to tell her how much I liked her books - all of them. She wrote back that most readers have only read Cold Comfort Farm. "It's rather like having a brilliant eldest child who puts the rest in the shade", she said. Since, with the exception of Cold Comfort Farm, all of her literary offspring are out of print, content yourself with buying the brilliant eldest book. Flora Poste, a true Virgo, descends on the Starkadder clan and creates calm out of chaos. And as with all good fairy tales, even the Starkadders lived as happily-ever-after as anyone with such a lurid emotional life could. (Note: If you enjoy this book and want to try some of Stella Gibbons' other titles, there are some gems, but they are all quite different in style from Cold Comfort Farm - it is unique.)