Book Review: Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons

Published in 1932, Cold Comfort Farm is a send-up of every melodramatic novel published during Queen Victoria's reign. The protagonist is newly orphaned Flora Poste, a nineteen-year old beauty from London. With no place else to go on her £100 annual allowance, she turns to her distant relations in Sussex, the Starkadders at Cold Comfort Farm. These include cousin Seth, who emanates smoldering raw sexuality, the fey Elfine, cousin Amos, who preaches hellfire and brimstone at the Church of the Quivering Brethren, and the mysterious matriarch of the family, Aunt Ada Doom, who "saw something nasty in the woodshed" at a tender age and has not been the same since.

The language that Gibbons uses is over the top, and then some. Every name of every beast drips with meaning. Every description of every locale contains multiple metaphors and maybe a simile or two, just in case the reader missed the point the first couple of times. The sky is "leaden" and the light is "viscous". The farm "crouched on a hillside" amidst fields "fanged with flints" while the "dawn crept over the Downs like a sinister white animal, followed by the snarling cries of a wind eating its way between the black boughs of the thorns. The wind was the furious voice of this sluggish animal light that was baring the dormers and mullions and scullions of Cold Comfort Farm."

Into this environment comes Flora, intent upon improving each of her relations, one at a time.

This was a very enjoyable read. I recommend it.