A review by saralynnburnett
Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
4.0
What a hilarious book! Flora is an uppity young woman who loses both of her parents and finds out that she's not as well off as she thought. She goes to stay with a friend in town who encourages her to earn her way by working and they can share costs while Flora lives with her. However, Flora decides to mooch off of relatives instead and for various hilarious reasons, chooses her cousins at Cold Comfort Farm to live with. The characters on this farm are a absolutely riot. I have no idea how Stella Gibbons dreamt them up because they are so random. You'll meet Aunt Ada Doom - who (famously) 'saw something nasty in the cowshed' when she was younger and has been crazy since, Amos, who preaches hell and brimstone every Sunday at church, Elfine, the glamorously beautiful diamond in the rough, and of course Feckless, Graceless, Aimless, and Pointless, the cows. Another memorable character is Judith - who has a very unhealthy obsession with her son Seth.
Flora decides to apply her upper class principles to this woe-begotten family farm and with the aid of her book, The Higher Common Sense, she goes about fixing all of their problems, starting with Adam, who washes the dishes with a twig (so she buys him a mop).
This book has sharp wit and loads of references to both contemporary and older novels - it was a joy to read! I highly recommend!
Flora decides to apply her upper class principles to this woe-begotten family farm and with the aid of her book, The Higher Common Sense, she goes about fixing all of their problems, starting with Adam, who washes the dishes with a twig (so she buys him a mop).
This book has sharp wit and loads of references to both contemporary and older novels - it was a joy to read! I highly recommend!