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Title: Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons ISBN: 0-14-018869-X Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: February, 1996 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.46 (35 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: A Book Rich In Characters
Comment: Alive Flora Poste's father is wealthy, but upon his death (not uncommon in English novels) Flora finds in reality he was"disconcertingly" poor. She sets out to find relatives to "live on" rather than find an occupation. Flora turns down offers from the expected/obvious relatives, to go live with the Starkadders, (a strange lot) at Cold Comfort Farm in Sussex. Once there we meet the most colorful and strange characters with names such as Caraway and his son Harkaway, and a grandfather named Agony Beetle. There are crop diseases with names such as King's Evil, Queen's Bane and Prince's Heritage.
No matter how many times I've read this book, it stills brings laughter and enjoyment. Ms. Gibbons is an author that brought you the sounds and smells of Cold Comfort Farm through the pages of book. I felt almost transported in time and place as I became engrossed in this book. I recommend it highly!
Rating: 5
Summary: QUIRKY, BRILLIANT, AND HILARIOUS PARODY...
Comment: Published in 1932, this novel is a hysterically funny, tongue in cheek parody of the heavy handed, gloomy novels of some early twentieth century English writers who had previously been so popular. Tremendously successful when first published, "Cold Comfort Farm" caused quite a stir in its time.
The novel starts out innocuosly enough, when well educated Flora Poste finds herself orphaned at the age of twenty. Discovering that her father was not the wealthy man she believed him to be, she is resigned to the fate of having to live on a hundred pounds a year. Opting to live with relatives, rather than earn her bread, she seeks out a most unlikely set of relations, the odd Starkadder family who live in Howling, Sussex.
Therein begins what is certainly one of the funniest novels ever written. When Flora arrives in Howling, she meets her odd relatives, who live in neglected, ramshackle "Cold Comfort Farm", where they still wash the dishes with twigs, and have cows named Graceless, Pointless, Feckless, and Aimless. Headed by a seventy nine year old matriarch, Flora's aunt, Ada Doom Starkadder, who has not been right in the head since she "saw something nasty happen in the woodshed" nearly seventy years ago, they are a motley and strange crew indeed. Confronted with their dismal and gloomy existence, Flora sets about trying to put things to right.
Peppered with eccentric, memorable characters, this book will take the reader on a journey not easily forgotten. It is one that is sure to make the reader revisit this novel yet again, like an old friend who is missed too soon.
Rating: 2
Summary: A book to pass the time
Comment: I first saw the movie, then decided to read the book. Well, I was confused by the timeline. This book was first published in 1932, yet one of the characters makes reference to Clark Gable and Gary Cooper being hot "20 years ago." Another reference is made of a man, Flora's date for a dance, who served in a war "in '46." I can't imagine Flora being escorted by a man over 90 years old (as he would have had to be if he served in 1846) yet it is clearly not yet 1946 in this book. Perhaps the author had a rather simplistic view of the future, where nothing has changed since 1932? So this has disturbed me ever since I read this book.
Granted this is a work of fiction but when Flora is talking to her friend Mrs. Smiling at the beginning and she deduces from her cousin's name "Judith" that the husband will be Amos and the sons Reuben and Seth...well, I had no idea how she pegged that (because they ARE all named those things). I assume it's a Biblical reference, but how many people are going to know that?
With almost all the characters Flora meets in Sussex, she is omniscient about them. She tells us all about how they think and what they will say and wear just by meeting them for the first time, and of course she is always right. I suppose we are meant to feel that Flora is an excellent judge of character but it seems to me that she was TOO right all the time. Like the author is hammering home Flora's sense of character judgment. They are almost all one-dimensional and Flora is easily able to sum up each character and make a simple decision which results in the improvement of each person. Too easy.
Otherwise, if you can mentally transport yourself to a decaying English farm in the '30s, where owners of small planes can simply land them in convenient fields, enjoy yourself.
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Title: I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith ISBN: 0312201656 Publisher: St. Martin's Press Pub. Date: May, 1999 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title:Cold Comfort Farm ASIN: B00009IB1D Publisher: Universal/MCA Pub. Date: 01 July, 2003 List Price(USD): $14.98 Comparison N/A, buy it from Amazon for $12.28 |
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Title: The Pursuit of Love & Love in a Cold Climate: Two Novels by Nancy Mitford ISBN: 0375718990 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 04 December, 2001 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Bachelor Brothers' Bed & Breakfast Pillow Book by Bill Richardson ISBN: 0312171838 Publisher: St. Martin's Press Pub. Date: 15 August, 1997 List Price(USD): $11.95 |
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Title: Diary of a Provincial Lady by E. M. Delafield, Arthur Watts ISBN: 0897330536 Publisher: Academy Chicago Pub Pub. Date: March, 1991 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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