Read: Cold Comfort Farm
It seems such a long time since I’ve done a proper review of a book I’ve read. Sometimes I’m incredibly reluctant to. I’ve jotted down quotable quotes in my trusty notebook, I’ve read the book. But I hesitate. My fingers hover over the keyboard, the cursor blinks blindly at me.
I am most hesitant when it’s a popular book. When my expectations have been high. And sometimes I just want to blog nothing but: read this! Ok, mostly it’s because I’m lazy and I like a shortcut.
But there are books that deserve to be sung. And Cold Comfort Farm might just be that book. It had me from its first sentence:
“The education bestowed on Flora Poste by her parents had been expensive, athletic and prolonged; and when they died within a few weeks of one another during the annual epidemic of the influenza or Spanish Plague which occurred in her twentieth year, she was discovered to possess every art and grace save that of earning her own living.”
So Flora Poste decides to stay with her relatives, the Starkadders, on Cold Comfort Farm in Sussex, where the cows are Graceless, Aimless, Feckless and Pointless, and the bull is Big Business (oh dear). It is a gloomy place, presided over by Aunt Ada Doom and filled with these caricatures of characters, and quite backward, but Flora soon puts things right.
Cold Comfort Farm is a humorous, affectionate read. It is a little bizarre and purposely over the top, and the dialect does take a while to get used to. And I’m really not familiar with the novels that it satirizes. Nevertheless, it made for a fun, and funny, read. I’m glad I finally picked it up!
I just had to point out this great paragraph describing Flora Poste’s friend:
“Mrs Smiling’s character was firm and her tastes civilized. Her method of dealing with wayward human nature when it insisted on obtruding its grossness upon her scheme of life was short and effective; she pretended things were not so: and usually, after a time, they were not. Christian Science is perhaps a larger organisation, but seldom so successful.”
That’s just one of the parts of the book that made me tingle, fingers to toes, with glee. Cold Comfort Farm had plenty of these toe-tingly moments, and filled me with this glow of a good book.
I noticed that a lot of the Goodreaders who read this book adored the film version, so I’m looking forward to watching it! Time to bump it up the Netflix queue.
Book provided by my library
This book is on my list. I thought I’d read some of the works it satirizes first, although I’m glad to see that it can still be enjoyed without being familiar with them.
Yes, yes, do bump it up: I think you’ll enjoy the film as much as you have enjoyed the book.
Done! Looking forward to it!