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Summary: QUIRKY, BRILLIANT, AND HILARIOUS PARODY...
Review: Published in 1932, this novel is a hysterically funny, tongue in cheek parody of the heavy handed, gloomy novels of some early twentieth century English writers who had previously been so popular. Tremendously successful when first published, "Cold Comfort Farm" caused quite a stir in its time. The novel starts out innocuosly enough, when well educated Flora Poste finds herself orphaned at the age of twenty. Discovering that her father was not the wealthy man she believed him to be, she is resigned to the fate of having to live on a hundred pounds a year. Opting to live with relatives, rather than earn her bread, she seeks out a most unlikely set of relations, the odd Starkadder family who live in Howling, Sussex. Therein begins what is certainly one of the funniest novels ever written. When Flora arrives in Howling, she meets her odd relatives, who live in neglected, ramshackle "Cold Comfort Farm", where they still wash the dishes with twigs, and have cows named Graceless, Pointless, Feckless, and Aimless. Headed by a seventy nine year old matriarch, Flora's aunt, Ada Doom Starkadder, who has not been right in the head since she "saw something nasty happen in the woodshed" nearly seventy years ago, they are a motley and strange crew indeed. Confronted with their dismal and gloomy existence, Flora sets about trying to put things to right. Peppered with eccentric, memorable characters, this book will take the reader on a journey not easily forgotten. It is one that is sure to make the reader revisit this novel yet again, like an old friend who is missed too soon.
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Summary: Ignorance under the Sukebind
Review: Read regularly for many belly laughs. Loved especially the descriptive passages cued by the **. Could be read as parody not only of Hardy's "Tess" etc. but also of modern psychlogical and counselling theory. Flora has a decidedly pragmatic view of people and their problems and is convinced of the rightness and immediacy of her methods - very refreshing! Much, much better than the film (as always). Stella's ability to set a scene and to describe character are unmatched! The reader feels that he/she has entered into the atmosphere-the fragrance of the Sukebind is so STRONG! Loved the names of the people and especially the cows!
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Summary: Jane Austen¿s Heart + Oscar Wilde¿s Brain
Review: Stella Gibbons's "Cold Comfort Farm" is a very intereting effort, despite some problems. The novel reads like a mix between Austen countryside prose and Wilde's cinism and desbilef, that made the book very interesting, but, on the hand, its characters are very shallow and monodimensional. When Flora losts her parents, she seeks any relative who can support her. The only family who accepts the girl are the Starkadder, who happen to live in the Cold Comfort Farm, hence the title. They are quite a family. Any of them has his/her problems, limitation and interests. Flora goes to live with than and she [can you guess?] changes everybody's lives, even the farm's. Gibbons's prose is fluent and interesting. The story, despite its previsibility, keeps the reader interested. The characters, as I aforementioned, are very monodimensional, ie, they are more types the human beings, like, the Sad Aunt, the Naive Cousin.... nevertheless, they are good to spend some hours with. Flora, the protagonist, is the more interesting, but and she suffers some changer through the narrative, but very smoothy ones. In the end, she is not very different from the girl she is the begining. The title is very interesting and self-explianable: in that farm, Flora finds some comfort, but this is still a cold place due to the weird people that live there. The farm can be read as a metaphor of the world and the some kind of people one may find, but even then, the author is a bit naive. Her world is too easy to live and the problems too easy to solve. Real life is a bit different. All in all, it is a funny reading. Despite being a bit of Austen and a bit of Wilde, this novel isn't close to any of their work. Anyway, it is worth reading for people who like an easy and sometimes interesting prose.
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Summary: delighful vacation reading! a book of great good cheer
Review: The heroine of this book, Flora Poste, notes that she has enjoyed many Victorian novels because, "they were the only kind of novel you could read while you were eating an apple." That's how I felt about this one. Plenty of irony and humor to overshadow the sentimentality.
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Summary: Brilliant!
Review: This book is a must for anyone who grew up immersed in "Rebecca" and "Wuthering Heights", but has since moved on. It captures the genre dead-on and sets it on its edge, and never drags. The suitor who has the true authorship of the Bronte sisters' works all figured out is not to be missed--gee, if I'd read this book in time, I could have used that in some of my college papers!
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Summary: FANTASTIC!
Review: This is an elegantly written, extremely funny book. Characters are well drawn and captivating. You will feel you know these people, as they reach such a broad spectrum of personalities. If you want to laugh, read this book. It's a blast.
Rating: 
Summary: Decent but not great
Review: This novel leaves me a little in the dark. I suspect I am not a part of Gibbons' target audience. I never felt there was anything particularly amusing here. Everything is pat and easily fixed at Cold Comfort -- but so puzzled am I, that I cannot but think -- this is the way the author meant it -- so why am I unsatisfied? Flora is one of those elegant, sensible people with such an established, no-nonsense worldview that one becomes a little tired with them before one is through. The characters she meets are lent no particular depth either. Yes, yes, they are supposed to be funny. But are they? Can we have that feeling of affectionate hilarity when we think about them? Not really. They are Flora's projects. Gibbons is apparently an Austen fan, and comes up with some Austenisms of her own. Some of them are rather good--they made me grin and sometimes giggle. And yes, some of the character's actions were a little funny, too. But again, that was all...Hmmm, I suppose it's called "light reading." But I wanted...more. One of the good things about "Cold Comfort Farm," I have to say, is that Gibbons knows where she is going. The plot does not make any tortuous twists in silly directions. No, Gibbons knows where she's going. She knows that she's not handling profound material. Or if she really is, and I don't get it, shoot me. Yet I think I *am* being pretty unfair. I agonized a little about whether to give "Cold Comfort" a 3 or a 4. Perhaps if I had come to it at a different point in my life, perhaps if I were less of a bored jaded hardass reader, I might have liked it better. It's a matter of taste. And this book was most definitely *not* a torture. It just wasn't the gem that the reviews, and my English teacher, have made it out to be.
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Summary: I never meta-parody I didn't like
Review: Through the late 1900s and into the 20th century, English novelists were full of woeful tales chronicling the sad fall of gentry from affluence to poverty. Stories like Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice joined the work of Charlotte and Emily Bronte, entertaining the turn of the century reader with these melodramatic tales. By the 1920s, when some had thought this trend had passed, it moved into another phase, with pulp paperbacks filled with lurid descriptions and the purplish prose imaginable. Stella Gibbons in 1932 attempted an emergency rescue, and succeeded wonderfully with her novel, Cold Comfort Farm, recently re-released to coincide with a new movie version by director John Schlesinger. Flora Poste is the recently orphaned waif who finds it necessary to impose herself on some body of relatives. Her meager inheritance of 100 pounds a year is not enough "keep you in stockings and fans," as her good friend Mrs. Smiling remarks. She writes to several distant family members and receives three replies. Most of them are appaling, except for the one from her cousin Judith Starkadder, which is, at least, interesting and appaling. She writes back and accepts the offer of boarding from Cold Comfort Farm, to find out what "rights" she has that cousin Judith mysteriously refers to. Her arrival at Cold Comfort begins a warming trend that ends up firing up every Starkadder in sight, including: Amos, the hellfire-and-brimstone owner of the farm and preacher to the Quivering Brethern; Reuben, his son and would-be caretaker of Cold Comfort; Seth, the hunk-a-hunk-a burning love that has terrorized the female countriside, to his mother's extreme shame; the flighty Elfine, who whisks around in ethereal garments quoting her own poetry; and the matriarch who rules Cold Comfort Farm with a iron fist, Aunt Ada Doom, who saw something "nasty in the woodshed" when she was a little girl, and who hasn't left Cold Comfort Farm since. Gibbons is artfully playing on the conventions of the melodrama, and it helps the reader to be familiar with the work of Thomas Hardy or Jane Austen to fully appreciate some of the playful work here. Without this meta-nature, Cold Comfort Farm would be amusing, but not nearly as effective. For modern readers, this is one novel that has weathered the intervening sixty years well, due in some part to Gibbons deft touch with her satire, but also her clear, readable style when not trying to out-purple the purple prose-wizards of the melodramas. This is the perfect novel for those book-weary high-school students still suffering under the weighty tomes of "literature" that is force-fed to them by our assembly-factory education system. A good dose of parody, a kind of 1930s National Lampoon, should help them feel better about books, and literature in general.
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Summary: READ THIS BOOK!
Review: Watching the movie is not enough. This is one of the most enjoyable books I have ever read. Gibbons is charmingly witty and clever. If you enjoy Austen and Victoriana, you will love this book.
Rating:
Summary: A funny book
Review: When I read Precious Bane, by Mary Webb, I heard that Cold Comfort Farm was a delicious spoof of it. Precious Bane is all dark and sober and dreary, as it tells of rural English life. Cold Comfort Farm, first published in 1932, is grotesque and airy and ends unbelievably happily. Flora, with a hundred pounds a year, goes to Cold Comfort Farm to visit her very odd relatives. She at once takes it upon herself to transform the people there. I laughed so much--it is really funny, especially the first half.
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