Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons | 1932 | Penguin | Paperback $ 9.99
In Gibbons’s classic tale, 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’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.
Though it’s easy to fall into the habit of thinking of classic literature as being necessarily intense and meaningful, there are in fact plenty of adventure- or comedy-focused classic books to choose from. I’m currently working my way through a big reading list of classic lit which does seem to be mostly made up of intense and meaningful works, but I think it is sometimes necessary to take a break from the heavy stuff and just enjoy reading for reading’s sake; with that need for a little bit of leisure in mind, I made sure to include several just-for-fun titles on my list for Classics Club — like this one, Cold Comfort Farm.
This book follows the adventures of Flora Poste, a sophisticated young woman who suddenly finds herself in need of a new place to live and no job with which to pay for it (nor any inclination to find one); she invites herself to live with some cousins she’s never met on their farm in an isolated countryside village. While there, she cheerfully-yet-pragmatically manages to insert herself into everybody’s business.
This was just a fun, entirely unserious little story. I think it provides a kind of combination of the “rural life is wacky” vibe of The Egg and I (sans poultry) + the “cosmopolitan gal takes gullible folks for a wild ride” vibe of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (sans vapidity), with also a little sprinkling of the “mundane futurist” vibe of the Carousel of Progress of Tomorrowland in Walt Disney World.
I’m aware that this is meant to be a parody of popular novels that romanticized rural life that were particularly hot in the early 20th c. — but I’ve never read any of those stories (well, yet), so it’s possible that some of the very specific humor aimed at this genre went over my head. I had a great time reading this book anyway, so I don’t think it is entirely necessary to have read the stuff it is caricaturing in order to enjoy Cold Comfort Farm.
I would recommend this book to readers who’d be up for a little entertaining, quick middlebrow read with low stakes and some gentle poking fun at old-fashioned life in the sticks.
Links:
- Obituary for Stella Gibbons from NYT
- Excerpt of Cold Comfort Farm from NPR
- “Cold Comfort Farm: Old-fashioned Humour and Humanity” article from The Guardian
Publication information: Gibbons, Stella. Cold Comfort Farm. New York City, NY: Penguin, 1996. Print.
Source: Public library.
Disclaimer: I am not compensated, monetarily or otherwise, for reviews of books or other products.
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