Stella Gibbons - Cold Comfort Farm

reviewed live on bookshow by Maggie Perkovich Dec 2013
This is what they call a Retro read, yet as far as I'm concerned it is
a first timer for me.
It was a book that is often referred to, and "Something nasty in the woodshed"
is often mentioned with no reference to the book from which this phrase comes!!!
I think it is a satire of human behaviour and of those dramatic novels written at the
turn of the century. Flora the heroine is an orphan who however is blest with a lot of
commonsense and a great deal of business acumen. Just as well, as her parents
left her with only £100.00 a year to live on, and no property at all.
She decided to write to all her relatives to see where she could settle with her rather
puny inheritance. After vaguely dissatisfying replies she decided to settle on "Cold
Comfort Farm" although the letter from them was barely legible and the tone of the
correspondence stark to say the least. It concluded with"Child, child, if you
come to this doomed house, what is to save you??Perhaps you may be able
to help us when our hour comes. Yr.affec. Aunt, "J. Starkadder".
Flora decided to go the farm and cast her lot in with her strange and assorted
relations although her friend Mrs. Smiling was concerned about her safety.
However although the appearance of her new dwelling was forbidding and the
assorted inhabitants enough to frighten the bravest soul, she sets to and sorts
out their tortured lives and strange living arrangements with alacrity, so that
by the end of the story a whole new Cold Comfort Farm and relations appear!!!
It is exceedingly funny, and well written to boot.
Highly recommended. Maggie Perkovic.