Cold Comfort Farm (1932)

Hilarious satire. ( )

This is how parodies are done. I had been meaning to read [Cold Comfort Farm] for some time now. I finally got hold of a copy and I am not disappointed. Some of the comments are dated (politically incorrect) but all in all Stella Gibbons story still holds up well.

Flora Post finds herself an orphan at 19. Over educated and not wanting to work she writes all her distant relatives to drum up an invitation to stay. She can't stand relatives and she can't stand life outside of London, but she doesn't want to work and "tidying" up others seems like a project she can aspire to.

Flora receives one definite invitation from her cousin Judith Starkadder in Sussex. The Starkadders own a farm called Cold Comfort. Off Flora goes and the shenanigans begin. There are wild men working on the farm. There is a hired girl who gets pregnant every spring by oversexed youngest Starkadder son, Seth. Cousin Judith suffers from severe melancholy. Her husband cousin Amos is full of hell fire and brimstone preaching. Last but certainly not least is the grand matriarch of the family, Aunt Ada Doom who sits up in her room orchestrating the life at Cold Comfort with her "madness" as she saw something nasty in the woodshed more than seventy years ago.

Flora is a bit annoying but her mission is clear and the outcome is delightful. I laughed throughout the book and just had a nice time with it. This is a classic but it is not serious high brow literature. It is comedy, pure comedy.

'You have the most revolting Florence Nightingale complex', said Mrs. Smiling. I'm a nurse so this quote really made me laugh.

I would have put down and abandoned this book so quickly if I had not been reading it for my book club. As it was, I practically used speed reading techniques to get through it, something I never normally do, especially with fiction, as I enjoy savoring the language and content of books. I wanted it to be over so I could read another book, almost any other book.

I think I’m the culprit who suggested this book for my book club. I wanted something funny as we’d been reading mostly very dark, depressing books, and this was to be our selection near the holidays.

I see others have rated this highly so I am curious as to what my book club members will think and eager to hear opposing opinions, and I assume there will be some.

I did not find this book at all entertaining (well, maybe about 5-10 out of 233 pages?) I did not laugh or even crack a smile more than once or twice. I didn’t feel connected to or care about any of the characters. I enjoy parodies but this one didn’t work for me at all. As I was reading, I was thinking that if the ending was interesting, I might up the book to a 2 star rating. Unfortunately, no satisfaction was forthcoming.

Now, I’ll have to go read the reviews of all those who gave this book 5 & 4 & 3 star ratings, and look forward to what members of my book group have to say about this book, especially any who enjoyed it. Maybe I’ll understand; I won’t be changing my rating though.

I wish we had read Emma instead! ( )

I reread this book every so often when I need a bit of fun. The gloomy rural novels it was parodying are all but forgotten, and Cold Comfort Farm lives on. If I meet someone who says "I saw something nasty in the woodshed," or "It was a black day for me when I took up with Agony Beetle," I can recognize a kindred spirit immediately. The movie wasn't bad at all, but it's even more fun to read the book. ( )

Basically, this is a makeover story. And makeover stories are one of my very favorite kinds of book.

Also, a funny thing is that this was written in 1932 but it takes place in the unspecified future, at least some point after 1938. You can really barely tell, except that people seem to fly around in planes a lot and there's no WWII. ( )