I imagine that Stella Gibbons wrote Cold Comfort Farm from the artfully distressed comfort of a small garret-like room. Clad in a light tweed and perched gracefully in front of an oversized front strike, Smith-Corona type writer with a cup of tea in bone china cup and saucer just out of reach of the return of the barrel of the typewriter. I can also imagine her gently cackling to herself in polite and proper manner as she clattered out the lines which would come together to form the world of Col More...

Nineteen year old Flora Poste, freshly orphaned and impossibly jaunty, decides to live with strange, barely civilized relatives in rural Sussex. The Starkadders are a mix of fire and brimstone religiosity, untrammeled sexual urges, pathological family ties, feigned mental illness, and general slovenliness. Cold Comfort Farm is a 1932 parody of Thomas Hardy, the Brontës, and D.H. Lawrence, with themes of Pygmalion and the meddling of Emma Woodhouse thrown in, and jabs at Eugene O'Neill, avant gar More...

Stella Gibbons' affectionately comical nod to traditional Victorian novels had me laughing on the third page, when she explained a minor character's passion for her unparalleled, world-renowned collection of brassières. The characters in this book are so vividly realized, and they are all the more ridiculous for how seriously they take themselves.

The basic story, for anyone who is interested: When she is nineteen years old, Flora Poste's parents die, and as she does not want to earn her living, More...

This may be one of the funniest books ever written and I pick it up whenever I feel inclined to have a whine and a moan. The protagonist, Flora Poste, is a bracing antidote for anyone inclined to be a sad sack. A student of the higher common sense, she understands that there are few troubles in life than cannot be set to rights or at least ameliorated by good hygiene, good manners, correct thoughts, and the proper foundation garments.

What I admire most about Flora is her unwillingness to give in More...

My review here is primarily a compare/contrast between the movie and the book.

Having seen the movie several times in recent years it was hard to dissociate the film from the book. I wish I had read the book first for a more pure experience. This is one of those rare occasions when I think I enjoyed the movie a little more. But that's probably because I saw it first.

In the book, Flora Post is a more ironic character than in the movie. In the movie, Flora's character type is parodied only very ge More...

This is the sort of book that I need to add to my collection and read again and again. Not only is it funny, but it's full of rich language, symbolism, and multiple meanings. It's the sort of book that always reveals something new with each reading.

If, like me, you've seen the 1996 movie adaptation of Cold Comfort Farm, with Kate Beckinsale, Ian McKellan, Joanna Lumley, Stephen Fry and Rufus Sewell (mmmm yum!), you'll know that there have always been Starkadders at Cold Comfort Farm and that Aunt Ada Doom saw something "narsty" in the woodshed when she was two. God I wish I had a memory like that! All the joys of the movie and more are in the book, a wonderful, clever, readable satire of the classic rural novel et al Thomas Hardy and the l More...

My love for the film version of this book is a bit ridiculous. I mean, I could watch it over and over and over and over again. It makes me smile just to think about it. Haven't we all seen something nasty in the woodshed?

The book is also highly pleasurable. Part of the pleasure for me, is just in remembering those extraordinary scenes I'd seen on-screen - but the NEW pleasure is the absolute genius of Stella Gibbons' prose. I mean, damn, she can write a funny sentence even while describing some More...

Reading this book is like watching a really great actor "chew scenery."
You know it's over the top (in this case intentionally so), but it's such great fun. The first two chapters are just a warm up. Once Flora gets to the farm, the tale really takes off.
Amazing characters, fanciful descriptions, hilarious antics. There is so much going on in this book that I think I must buy it to enjoy repeated helpings.
According to my meagre research, this was Stella Gibbons' first novel, one that she could ne More...

Beware when the suke-bind is in bud! A fantastic, jocular flip-off to the natural, melancholy country novels of Thomas Hardy and D.H. Lawrence and other female writers that I haven't read yet. And funny! This novel made me laugh in my chair. Audibly. I can't remember the last novel - Bridget Jones' Diary? Stephanie Meyer's Eclipse? - to make me laugh out loud.

Recently orphaned Flora Poste makes a plan to sponge off relatives instead of work for her keep. She is intrigued by the gloomy prospects More...

Written in 1933, this book satirizes the popular British pulp novels of the time that always had some poor little waif of a girl orphaned and sent to the country to live with her terrifying relatives. Instead, with Cold Comfort Farm, our 20 year old heroine Flora loses her parents, and, faced with the prospect of living on 100 pounds a year, decides instead of live off of the most appalling group of relatives she can find, and then fix all their issues and basically "tidy up."

Almost all the char More...

Read this book! A mid 1930's rural British novel it is fabulous and under-appreciated. The story is bizarre, funny and engaging but her writing style impressed me the most. I couldn't help but read passages out loud because they were so great.

Few years a go I saw the latest movie based on this book and it was very funny. Therefore I was curious to read the book; also I have caught some whiffs of freshness and modernity from women writers of this era (thirties) and I'm still curious about that as well.

A young educated urbane woman visits her relatives on a farm and finds them moored in all sorts of stagnant nonsensical woes. In blithe disregard of their ways she solves their problems and gives a lift to their aspirations. The descrip More...

Well educated, sensible, and apt to take people in hand, Miss Flora Poste is nevertheless a teenaged orphan without much in the way of finances (at least by her standards). So she resolves to live with relatives, both as a cost-savings and to provide her with material for the novel she intends to write when she is 50. She chooses her second cousin Judith's farm on the basis of the town (named Howling, Sussex), the farm (named Cold Comfort) and Judith's vague mention of owing Flora based on a wro More...

How in the hell have I never read Cold Comfort Farm? It is one of the most singularly delicious and British novels I have encountered in quite some time. I remember Claudia in college droning on and on (usually having borrowed my “Jane Austen” dress to mope around in while she drank Earl Grey as she contemplated some slight in her love life; I really love Clo, but man she could be dramatic—maybe that’s why we got along so well? Like calling to like?) about it, and she even recommended the movie— More...

I decided to read this book because the movie based on it is one of my favorite shows ever. I hadn't known it was a book and when I saw it on the bookstore shelf I knew I had to read it. I so enjoyed this book! I was delighted that the movie script, which I found to be endlessly clever, was based so closely on the book, that so many funny little bits and lines were original. It made me love the movie even more. Some parts of the book, I must admit, I found to be slightly tedious and overwritten, More...

Cold Comfort Farm has been a fav. movie for a while, and after seeing Betsy's rave review I finally picked up the copy that had been languishing on my bookshelf for six months (o library booksales!) The verdict? This book is better than the movie, though you really need to see the old woman say "I saw something NASTY in the woodshed!" to properly appreciate the line.

The clipped and witty tone of well-written British lit always makes my inner-tongue more polished since I hear lines in my head as More...

Cold Comfort Farm was a perfect book for me for its combination of wry humor and tongue-in-cheek pastoralism, but might be a bit toward left-field for the average reader. Unless you've read a lot of Thomas Hardy (or are, like myself, presently living on a farm with a bunch of real characters!), you probably won't get this book.

On the other hand, the protagonist is riot! She's smart, witty, and wholly unflappable. She's feminine without giving herself completely over to the "happily-ever-after" e More...

One of my best friends in high school was given an old copy of this book, from when it was first published in the '30s, by a smart, quirky elderly friend. At the time nobody else seemed to be reading it, at least nobody else our age. Both of us devoured it, loved it, and went around quoting it at school ("I saw something narsty in the woodshed!"), cementing forever our places in the high school hierarchy (the really weird, geeky kids) and annoying the hell out of our other friends. Imagine how s More...

I'm not sure I've ever seen a movie that was so faithfully recreated from the book. I have seen the movie many times and really liked it. When I picked up the book, I was so hoping for the same satire and quirkiness. I was not in the least disappointed and the book was larger followed to the letter by the movie. Great fun!

Wonderfully gothic parody of 19th century novels of rural life. Flora Poste, a crisp young city girl, recently orphaned, descends on distant relatives and dispels their repressed and rustic gloom by solving the mystery of the ‘Something nasty In the woodshed’ that had kept Aunt Ada Doom in her bedroom for many years. Brimming with sexual allegory and ridiculously funny, the Starkadder family enriched my childhood with their language and taught me the fun to be had with words. Mrs Beetle reigned More...

Like many others, I came to the book through the movie, which is brilliant. Once I saw the movie, I knew I had to read the book, and I was not disappointed. Gibbons works within conventional tropes and themes, yet comes to some very unconventional conclusions. The charaters are fabulous and the running joke about the four cows (Aimless, Pointless, Feckless & Graceless) who are so bored & downtrodden that they fail to notice their own limbs falling off never fails to make me laugh out lou More...

I came to this book wanting to like it and wanting to find it funny...but I was disappointed.

I found the storyline a let down and never really cared about any of the characters who all seemed one dimensional.

I read to the end to find out the answer to the mystery only to discover the author never bothers to tell us, which left me annoyed.

I have given it two stars as I didn't loathe it - but I didn't feel it deserved more as I just never felt any real interest or excitement in it.

This is not a bo More...

This was a BookCrossing RABCK, and the back cover description was positively titillating!

When the sukebind was in bud, the orphaned Flora Poste, expensively, athletically and lengthily educated, descended on her relatives at Cold Comfort Farm. There were plenty of them -- Judith, alone in her grief; Amos, called by God; Seth, smouldering with sex; Elfine, who needed a little polish; and, of course, Great Aunt Ada Doom, who saw something nasty in the woodshed. And Flora felt it incumbent upon her

More...

Finally, I've convinced someone to read this book. Although the person in question is my boyfriend, who is at a disadvantage to my other friends that don't have to live with me constantly cajoling them, I'm still naming it a victory.

Why? Simple. This book is the pinnacle of sheer farce and satire. Of the best sort. And for all those who are rabid (like I was) for something more by Gibbons, I hate to be the harbinger of sad news, but everything else she wrote was --oh, pardon me, stretch, yaaawww More...

COLD COMFORT FARM. (1932; this ed. 1977). Stella Gibbons. ****.
This is a fairy tale told in novel form. It’s a little like the story of the city mouse and the country mice. It all starts out with our meeting Miss Flora Poste. She is now an orphan, her father having just died. She was surprised, however, to learn that her father – who had been described and thought of as “well-off” – was riddled with debts. When they were all paid off, she was left with an income of 100£. This was hardly sufficie More...

When I was little my parents loved the movie adaptation of Cold Comfort Farm. But satire is rough on kids. Satire draws a wild expressionist version of the world - like the stereotyped faces of Greek theatre - and asks you to hold in your mind both the pretension and reality.

Now the book makes sense. Now I've read D.H. Lawrence - the painfully pointed scene of Chatterley's wheelchair, stuck on the hill, while his wife cringes at yet another frustrated phallic symbol. Now I've read William Faulk More...

“What a hoot!” crowed Jane, knowing full well that no proper lady would use such crass language, especially in London, but she was on an insufferably indelicate farm in Sussex, and one sometimes has to throw down one’s lace gloves and simply declare that a story is a downright hoot.

Such is my opinion of Stella Gibbons’ hilarious tale of young, urbane Flora Poste’s foray into the sorry business and cursed characters of Cold Comfort Farm. What adventures she has as she meddles and sways and decide More...

Stella Gibbons' first novel is also her most widely known. She was never to repeat the instant success which was afforded to Cold Comfort Farm, despite writing over 20 further novels, including a Cold Comfort sequel.
It is a wonderfully funny novel, ostensibly written as a parody of the works of such authors as Mary Webb, Thomas Hardy and DH Lawrence. However, familiarity with the works of those authors is not required to enjoy Cold Comfort Farm, a book so full of wit and sunny optimism that it More...

Sometimes my lovely boyfriend agrees to read for me. He has a very delicate english accent, and I love hearing the stories come to life in his soft voice. This book was no exception.
When I read it by myself I couldn't help but to giggle a little bit. But when he read the words out loud, we both bursted with laughter. Somehow this book was just better that way. Like it was meant to be heard, not just to be read quietly.

However I did enjoy this book. The writing style was amazing; so sarcastic, al More...