Cold Comfort Farm

This was a fun read. Though the ending was almost to happy, it fit the farcical nature of the story. We should all be so lucky to have Flora interfere with our lives.

This book is fun to read and the story keeps you interested. At times I could not put it down!

Delightful 1920's mien. Beautiful British Flora Poste is orphaned, goes to stay for a time with her brassiere collecting friend and is sent letters by many unique relatives offering to have her reside with them. The strangest of these comes from Cousin Judith Starkadder of Cold Comfort Farm. Flora likes to "fix things", i.e., put everything and everyone in its' proper place, but Cold Comfort Farm, the locale she chooses, is truly in the Middle of Knowwhere with very strange inhabitants. Think almost of a British 20's more subtle version of the Addams family. Flora wants to make them live normal lives. Her distant cousin, a new Minister has fallen in love with her and tells her that eventually he will pick her up in his plane. Watch this film to see what means Flora must go through with each family member trying to impose normalcy. Their servant man prefers washing (clettering) dishes with a twig and thinks that the washing brush she bought him is so beautiful that he wears it around his neck...;) Much fun, very gravitating film. Kate Beckinsale (Flora Poste or as the Starkadders refer to her "Robert Poste's child") does a beautiful job! Much fun to watch. I also recommend the book by Stella Gibbons.

Stella Gibbons book is a wonderful satire of the Jane Austen genre. However this edition of the book itself is pathetic. The print size is about 8 point. There is a two-inch margin at the top of each page. The print size could have been enlarged without increasing the size of the book. The ink is gray - not black. To read it most people will need a strong light and a page magnifier. I recommend the book strongly, but not this printing.

After finishing the book I was left with these questions:1. What was the nasty thing she saw in the shed?2 Why did they call Poor Robert Post Daughter?3 What was said to the old lady to get her out of her room and take a trip, as if she was "normal" after spending all of those years in her room!?

So i have just received this book in the mail....and the "book" looks more like a magazine. When i opened it, the print is quite small. The cover looks cheap and the way its laid out is awful. I must say that I am a bit disappointed. I know the story to be good and Im going to suck it up and read it but if you want an actual book in comparison to this horrible format, i would keep looking.

In a chaotic world nothing is as comforting as a meddling person managing to bring everything right with the world. High praise to the brilliant creative author. And now you have the list of perfect names for your cows.

I was attracted to this novel by the movie that was derived from it. There were some humorous passages, but many of the references to contemporary literature went over my head. This novel might be of particular interest to an Anglophile studying the early 30's.

This is the novel that broke the mould. It was written tongue in cheek as a parody of contemporary romance novels. As such it might have been boring but fortunately, the writing got completely out of hand and a whole new genre was born. Some passages could be straight out of a Monty Python sketch; legs fall off cows, poor, single and left-on-the-shelf Rennet throws herself down a well and is rescued by the hired girl Miriam. Urk feels he has been jilted and again it is Miriam (of four illegitimate children) who comforts him as he lies face down in the beef sandwiches murmuring "my little water-vole." The names are brilliantly imagined, wonderful and strange: Aunt Ada Doom who saw something nasty in the woodshed (we never find out what) heads a family of impossible misfits, but what else would you expect to find in Sussex? That is Flora's opinion. Flora seems to be a parody of Jane Austen’s Emma. But unlike Emma, she is never taken down a peg and this is where the novel falters. Flora starts out as something of a rebel but in the end, once she has sorted out all the problems of Cold Comfort Farm: Elfine is happily married, Aunt Ada Doom is safely removed to Paris and Seth to Hollywood, then her lover flies down from London and they disappear into the sunset and, one fears, rather conventional married life. At the very least her matchmaking between Elfine should have gone wrong and she herself have married Richard Hawk-Monitor (easy on the eye but slow on the uptake) or better still have accepted Reuben’s proposal (á la a Midsummer Night’s dream) while under the influence of some strange Sussex herb!

Cold Comfort Farm is one of the funniest books of all time and I heartily recommend it to anyone wanting a laugh-out-loud read. BUT - this Kindle edition is so far below the usual standard of Kindle books, I could hardly believe it - there are so many mis-spelt words and the punctuation is laughable throughout. I can only think it was edited by a robot which is not actually programmed for the English Language. Please could someone do something about it? I persevered but other readers may well be so put off they will give up and so miss a rare treat.

Don’t buy this edition as it’s full of typos and misprints. But I wouldn’t buy any version because this is a crap book. It’s not funny at all but it is silly. Yes, I know it’s satirical but a satire should be amusing, not boring. I’ve no objection to her mocking pompous fools like Mybug but I’m less impressed with her sneering at Jane Austen, the Brontes, and of course Thomas Hardy. I’m not a fan of Hardy, and I dislike Wuthering Heights as a horrible book filled with horrible characters, but for a very mediocre writer like this to mock infinitely more talented authors... Well, where did she get the nerve? I can’t imagine how anyone ever found this book funny: I skimmed through it, finished with relief, and am looking forward to immediately forgetting every last word.

Our heroine , "orphaned" at 19 doesn't really have enough money to live on . Either she has to find work of some sort or stay with relatives. She chooses the latter and ends up at Cold Comfort Farm.Her relatives are a brutish bunch of misfits that talk darkly of a family curse and a great wrong that was done to our heroine's father for which they must atone.The characters all have a cartoonish quality which lends itself well to the comedic energy that drives the plot . Written in the 1930s , the author freely admits to parodying/lampooning some of the great pastoral classics that were being written by male authors at that time. And this work is comparable to those literary Greats like DH Lawrence and Thomas Hardy.Like todays writer Martin Amis there's hardly a dull sentence. Hardly anything that's not fresh, alive, original. What U get is an entire book of startlingly fabulous sentences. Something that will make many want to re-read this gentle comedy again and again.5 Stars !!!!!

I really enjoyed spotting the books/authors/characters that Stella Gibbons was poking fun at and actually properly chuckled at a few of the ridiculous scenes she created.The use of ridiculous made up words the farm family used and the arch main character Flora pitting herself against their gloomy way of life were delightful.High melodrama at it's best. Just one complaint. What was the something nasty in the woodshed?!