Approving mention of artist Marie Laurencin. The catchphrase: 'I saw something nasty in the woodshed.' (And the pointed response: 'Did it see you?') Aunt Ada Doom and the clever way her passages are written in the second person to make the reader complicit in her psychological machinations.

Our heroine's casual resort to ethically ambiguous behaviour, up to and including theft and forgery, with no comeuppance whatsoever. The way Flora's 'tidy' arrangements for people to be-done-by-as-they-want have undercurrents of social subversion.

Refusal to judge people's worth along class lines (Flora's ally Mrs Beetle is working class) or by a simplistic division into urban and rural (the urban Mr Mybug is as warped as the rural Starkadders). Overt feminism including reference to contraception which was brave at the time especially for a writer, such as Stella Gibbons, who was employed by The Lady magazine. Science fictional elements in the background. The story's ending is a tad too tidy but then Cold Comfort Farm is an upbeat comic fantasy so implications of happy ever after are only to be expected.Īspects of Cold Comfort Farm which might be of special interest to whileaway readers Flora, who is 'possessed of every art and grace save that of earning her own living', doesn't tidy up every loose end, however, as she fails to discover both the fate of the goat and the nature of her 'rights'. Stella Gibbons specifies that the story is set in 'the near future' as seen from 1932, she creates a fictional history covering the period from 1932 until at least 1946, her characters use videophones, and aeroplanes are a comparatively common method of transport (even postmen use them to deliver mail).įlora, our heroine, is a pragmatic and modern young woman who moves in with her hopeless and backward relatives, the Starkadders of Cold Comfort Farm, and proceeds to 'tidy them up' using The Higher Common Sense. One of the interesting aspects of Cold Comfort Farm, which I'd forgotten until I re-read the novel, is its alternative future backstory and consequent science fictional references. The first third of the book is slow by contemporary standards and the humour doesn't manifest until the scene has been thoroughly set but it's well worth persevering. It's primarily a parody which targets some of the tiresome rural dark!fic which was being written at the time *cough*T.F.Powys*cough* (of which more later) although it also contains healthy chunks of social satire. Cold Comfort Farm (1932) by Stella Gibbons is a classic comic novel and, even re-reading it in the twenty-first century, the humour made me laugh aloud.

Comic novel by stella gibbons