![]() ![]() ![]() Viola marries young and is widowed young. Enter another practically penniless orphan, Viola Wither. This is a dreamy social comedy, and somewhat of a Cinderella story as well. While Cold Comfort Farm is far and away Stella Gibbons’ best-known novel, there is much to enjoy in her other books namely, Nightingale Wood. It’s also an amusing movie, starring the inimitable Kate Beckinsale. ![]() This blog post is so meta.).Īnyway, Cold Comfort Farmis a highly entertaining read. But don’t be fooled by this description! because Stella Gibbons is out to slice the exhausted trope of the earthy farm novel into tattered ribbons with the gleaming razor blade of satire (look at that turn of phrase! This is exactly the kind of “purple” writing Gibbons is making fun of in Cold Comfort Farm. This brings her to Cold Comfort Farm in Howling, Essex, a profoundly messy situation with deep mud, unwashed dishes, and plenty of misery to go around. A cosmopolitan young woman who is left orphaned and almost penniless, she plans to live off her relations while she gathers material for a novel she will write when she is fifty-three. ![]() Miss Flora Poste, our heroine, cannot abide messes. It’s written as a letter and it becomes more and more hilarious the further you get into the book. And when I recommend it, I try to remember to mention that you really should read the foreword at the beginning, the author’s little chat before she dives into the novel proper. I tell everyone I know to read Stella Gibbons’ Cold Comfort Farm. ![]()
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