Cold Comfort Farm Book

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 Cold Comfort Farm; Postes, Starkadders, Beetles, Myburns and all.

Flora Poste is bright eyed, knowing, impossibly perky and recently orphaned (if indeed 20-somthing ladies can be orphans). Apparently penniless with only £100 per year to her name (this was thought to be a paltry sum in Jane Austen's day so clearly young Ms Poste is gently skulling up financial shit-creek), she throws herself upon the mercy of her relatives and with jutting chin and determined step, strikes out boldly for Sussex and Cold Comfort Farm. There she is greeted by the biblically populous and biblically named Starkadder clan who are all the proud owners of names which make them sound much more like extras in Lord of the Rings than gentle farming folk.

Amos has his religion, Aunt Ada has her memories of something nasty in the woodshed, Elfine has her nature walks, Reuben has his chickens, Urk has his watervole obsession, Judith has Seth and Seth... well Seth has had just about everything with a pulse between Cold Comfort and Howling.

Speaking from personal experience, farms are not places where you are encouraged to either lie abed, think genteel thoughts or sit around doing nothing all day aside from acting as a kind of graceful mobile decoration to the general day to day background. Accordingly Flora Poste decides to engage herself in useful farm based activies - none of which actually involve agriculture or animal husbandry of any sort. Much better to take in hand the wayward social, sexual and psychological issues of the family at large. And this she does with some aplomb, although to fill in the detail would be a big old spoiler so you should just go and read this surprisingly enjoyable book instead.

This book made it to the 1001 list for being an incisive and witty dissection of rural life as seen through the eyes of a chic urbane invader or something like that.