"At last," a reader of "Cold Comfort Farm" might think, "here's an author who sounds as if she was having a grand old time writing this, and we're going to have a grand old time, too." There's a springtimeness, a Midsummernight's Eveness, a light-heartedness, a light-headedness, a romp-in-the-literary-woodsness, that makes "Cold Comfort Farm" sheer pleasure. Gibbons has many targets in this funny satire, hits them all, and readers can hear ballons pop on almost every page. Funny, as in humor & wit, more than guffaws or belly LOLs.
The story is straight-forward. A young woman, Flora Poste, firmly in control of her own life, is left with a very small income, a determination not to work, a quite amazing skill in sussing other people's "yes" buttons, and no compunction about doing so, in the nicest possible way, of course. In the first ten pages, she's used her expensive, athletic, and progressive education to charm her cousin Judith Starkadder into letting her come to Cold Comfort Farm, located in Howling, Sussex, far from the maddning crowd of Flora's native London.
There, our unflappable heroine finds decay, squalor, surly squabbles, and a gaggle of cousins who are pretty decayed, too, in a bucolic variety of ways. They are chained to the Farm by the matriarch, Aunt Ada Doom Starkadder. Aunt Ada believes that at age two, she saw something nasty in the woodshed & with her threat to go mad if anyone leaves, contrives to keep the gaggle within the gates.
***Gibbons treats us to poetic interludes of rural descriptions reminiscent of Virgil's Georgics, Webb's "Precious Bane," much of Hardy, definitely the Brontes, and a few other worthies. She helpfully heralds these send-ups with asterisks so we don't miss them.
Flora, however, firmly goes about discovering the buttons of her cousins by the dozens, the Starkadders. With the help of her London friends, conveniently every-ready to fall in with her plans, Robert Postes' child develops engagingly unexpected ploys to sort things out. 'Twould be a plot-spoiler to describe how she accomplishes what for whom, but there are some splendid episodes, much deft tranformation from caricature to character, and nimble writing.
Reader Alert: The narrator, Flora, and her friends use British English. The Starkadders and country people speak in rural(Sussex?)dialect. Some readers might enjoy this & others find distracting. Generally, it fits just right & doesn't seem to require a Sussex-London Dictionary.
An example:
'We was feared for 'ee, soul,' said Letty, reprovingly, after a pause in which lamps were lit and the curtains drawn...."Dunamany times we near came up to fetch 'ee down again."
"Too nice of you," said Flora, languidly, with one eye on the preparation of the milk. " (p.210)
Readers yearning for some lit'rary pleasure that's fun to read, fun to think about, and lifts one up may find Gibbons just the thing. Lynn Truss, who contributes a pleasing introduction, has enlivened her own books with excepts from "Cold Comfort Farm," a considerable endorsement. In print since 1932, "Cold Comfort Farm" has probably cheered many a reader then and the warmth, humor, and wild imagination in this book may cheer many a reader now.
'Tes highly recommended indeed.
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