This title is a classic of its kind, a dazzling parody of the earthy, melodramatic novels of the period. Flora Poste has been expensively educated to do everything but earn her own living. When she is orphaned at twenty, she decides her only option is to go and live with her relatives the Starkadders at Cold Comfort Farm. What relatives, though: Judith, alone in her grief; raving old Ada Doom, who once saw something nasty in the woodshed; Amos, called by God; Seth, smouldering with sex; and Elfine, who just needs a little polish. Flora feels it incumbent upon her to bring order into the chaos. And she turns out to be remarkably good at it.
Cold Comfort Farm (Penguin Classics)
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Book Description
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.
- 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
? Quite simply one of the funniest satirical novels of the last century.?
?Nancy Pearl, NPR's "Morning Edition"
? Delicious . . . "Cold Comfort Farm" has the sunniness of a P. G. Wodehouse and the comic aplomb of Evelyn Waugh's "Scoop".?
?"The Independent" (London)
?Nancy Pearl, NPR's "Morning Edition"
? Delicious . . . "Cold Comfort Farm" has the sunniness of a P. G. Wodehouse and the comic aplomb of Evelyn Waugh's "Scoop".?
?"The Independent" (London)
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
50 of 50 people found the following review helpful
Format: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.
75 of 78 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
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.
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.
57 of 58 people found the following review helpful
By K. R. French
Format:Paperback
I read the book as part of a book club. We all found it amusing and entertaining. Be warned - this is not the same text as originally published. I ordered this edition because it would ship sooner than others which appeared higher on the sort list. While the story arc is the same, and the characters as quirky, it became apparent that my version misses a lot of the descriptive prose my friend all read. Skip this edition and get the full deal.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
3.0 out of 5 stars
Bizarre comedy
I liked the central character for her directness - she got things done, but the family were unbelievable, and the style of language annoyed me
Published 4 days ago by Paul
4.0 out of 5 stars
Very Funny and clever
A very light and easy read. lot of home truths but very, very funny. Excellent read for anyone familiar with DH Lawence
Published 6 days ago by annapetroica
5.0 out of 5 stars
Hilarious
Although I am a fan of Mary Webb, whose literature this book makes a spoof of, I nevertheless saw the humour as justified and delighted in the characters who live on Cold Comfort... Read more
Published 21 days ago by A. Berry
5.0 out of 5 stars
Book better than movie
I stole this book from my mum when i was a teenager and then lost it later in one of my million moves. Now It's on my kindle & i don't have to worry about my mum taking it back. Read more
Published 27 days ago by Book Lady GI
5.0 out of 5 stars
Unbelievably Funny!
This is a thoroughly modern satire of the gothic romantic novels such as "Wuthering Heights," updated for modern tastes and incredibly funny! This is hard to put down. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Patricia Fulda
3.0 out of 5 stars
poorly printed in this edition - unabridged hardcover without dust...
The impetus to write a review of this particular hardback unabridged edition does NOT relate to the content, but DOES RELATE to the incredibly poor print job. Read more
Published 1 month ago by reader
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Rare Gem
Classics are all too often treated with kid gloves and thought to be old, brittle, fragile, and boring. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Rob Stauffer
5.0 out of 5 stars
Hilarious Work and Solid Read
I recently started reading through the 100 books that must be read in High School and found this one on the first page. Read more
Published 2 months ago by spence3338
4.0 out of 5 stars
Surprised at my self for enjoying it!
I read this book with my book club. At first I was not sure if I was going to like it, but as it developed I kind of enjoyed it more. A little naive and simple. Read more
Published 2 months ago by M. Elvir
2.0 out of 5 stars
Very strange edition.
This is a review of the edition, not of the book. This edition is by BN Publishing. The strange, stiff cover, the absence of a copyright date, and the weirdly large margins lead... Read more
Published 2 months ago by Kelly Malone
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