Cold Comfort Farm

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) --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition. Cold Comfort Farm (Unabridged) by Stella Gibbons 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 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. Once there she discovers they exist in a state of chaos and feels it is up to her to bring order. 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.