Ross Recommends: Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
I make no effort to hide my love for witty, culturally satirical books written by women in the first few decades of the nineteenth century. Perhaps a little niche, I know, but there is something truly magic in the way these women, with surgical slices, poke fun at the status quo and incapacitate me under tidal waves of rolling belly laughs. The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim is responsible for this obsession but I am overjoyed to announce a new member has taken up snug residency in the chambers of my heart.
Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons is nothing short of wild and, having read it for the first time, I found myself lifted from a reading slump that had lasted several weeks. Flitting reluctantly through the first few pages of multiple texts, nothing felt right. That is until I plucked Cold Comfort Farm from my shelves, where, I admit, it had been slumped for some time, gathering dust. I am so glad I did however, as the hilarious world contained within its delicate blue covers was exactly what I needed. Somehow uplifting, melodramatic and poignant all at the same time, I was more than happy to be led by Gibbons into the rugged, rural depths of Sussex and to squelch around the dilapidated hodgepodge of the Cold Comfort farmhouse.
Our protagonist is the daring, at times aloof, but rigidly determined socialite Flora Poste. Following the death of her parents, a cataclysmic event that she is seemingly unbothered by, Flora writes to distant relatives for a place to live and finds herself, perhaps by fated forces, drawn to Cold Comfort Farm and the provincial Starkadders. In a whirlwind of witty, yet bucolic, prose, Gibbons maps out a complicated array of totally unique characters and tense interpersonal connections that persistently teeter on the edge of despair. But fear not, for the good graces and common sense of Flora, accompanied by her ever faithful copy of “The Higher Common Sense”, are here to light the civilised way. Comical situation by comical situation, Flora works to revolutionise this, in her eyes, backwards family, allowing no one to escape her transformative gaze...even the cows.
For me, Cold Comfort Farm succeeds in many ways. It is, on the one hand, a very funny rural novel with interesting and engaging character driven comedy that leaves enough to the imagination to keep the reader hooked. What ever did happen in the wood shed I wonder? Beyond this though, and what cemented Gibbons’ genius in my eyes, is the persistent, smart parody of polite society that invades every interaction. Just as Flora seems omniscient to the rustic Starkadders, not one single aspect of “Britishness” is left unscathed by Gibbons’ biting wit. Not a criticism as such but rather a call for the inquisitive, I feel unable to deny Gibbons’ challenge of looking beyond the everyday and peak at the reasons behind why we do things the way we do. What makes the obvious way of doing things seem obvious? Reading Cold Comfort Farm is certainly at start at finding an answer.
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