Things I Like - Books

Another coincidence occurred this week. The movie Cold Comfort Farm (the 1996 version with Kate Beckinsale, Ian McKellen and Rufus Sewell) arrived from Netflix. I was surprised to see it, having completely forgotten that I put it in the queue several months ago. But that’s not a coincidence, just forgetfulness. The coincidence is that I had just finished reading the book the prior week.

Cold Comfort Farm was written by Stella Gibbons in 1932 and is, per the Barnes & Noble website:

…a hilarious parody of D. H. Lawrence's and Thomas Hardy's earthy, melodramatic novels. When the recently orphaned socialite Flora Poste descends on her relatives at the aptly named Cold Comfort Farm in deepest Sussex, she finds a singularly miserable group in dire need of her particular talent –organization.

The book has been called “very probably the funniest book ever written…a brilliant novel along classic lines” (Sunday Times) and “quite simply one of the funniest satirical novels of the last century” (NPR’s Morning Edition). I expected to hurt myself laughing. And I did laugh out loud several times, starting with Ms. Gibbons’ submittal letter to her publisher in which she describes her attempt to assist the average reader in identifying good “Literature” by marking certain passages with one, two or three stars in the manner of the Baedeker travel books.

If you’re a fan of English novels such as Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre or anything by Thomas Hardy, but not so big a fan that you can’t laugh at them, you would enjoy this book. In addition to a story that moves along quickly and some funny dialog, Cold Comfort Farm has just about every character stereotype imaginable:

• Flora - the orphaned young woman who goes to live with distant cousins
• Aunt Ada Doom - the domineering old bat who saw ‘something nasty in the woodshed’ as a child and hasn’t been right since
• Cousin Judith - the long suffering wife with an unhealthy devotion to her youngest son
• Cousin Amos - the fire and brimstone preaching husband
• Ruben - the eldest son who lives for the farm and thinks Flora is there to steal his inheritance
• Seth - the ruggedly handsome, over-sexed younger son who thinks all women are out to trap him
• Elfine - the pretty but wild daughter who spends her days quoting poetry and flitting about the forest

Flora arrives at CCF, takes one look at the nut job Starkadder family and sets about fixing all the problems. The book isn’t trying to be complex or thought provoking – it’s a nice little excursion to the English countryside in the manner of Jane Austin. All of the problems are tidied up by the final chapter and everyone ends up happy. Perhaps not the funniest book ever written, but definitely entertaining and worth a read.

Oh yeah, the movie. It was a pretty faithful presentation of the book and the acting was all spot on. But it felt kind of slow, I liked the book better.