Cold Comfort Farm

When I was younger, I stayed overnight in a haunted house, or at least a house that felt haunted. I was in a big, creepy room by myself, and sleep was impossible. Instead, I sat up through the night, feeling very alone. During that long wait for dawn, this book was there for me.

It’s a satire that’s now more famous than many of the grim rural novels that inspired it; more important to me then, it’s the very funny story of Flora Poste, a modern young woman who goes to stay at a remote country farm with her relatives,… show more.

I love this book for its humour and portrayal of the English. Orphaned Flora Poste sets out to organise the relatives who have given her a home. She is a young woman who likes order and it is not long before she has them all licked into shape. It is a book with great heart. 

We are all guilty of taking ourselves too seriously sometimes and Cold Comfort Farm never fails to make me smile. Flora Poste is an unusual and engaging heroine who finds herself in rather desperate personal circumstances but who rises to the occasion magnificently. It is in her nature to straighten out and tidy up messy situations which she does with a breezy, unflappable assurance, seeing straight into the hearts of Cold Comfort Farm’s very mixed and conflicted inhabitants. The book always conveys to me a sense of great optimism and the author’s light touch is wholly admirable. We all need… show more.

When I’m depressed I feel utterly helpless, so reading this story about a woman transforming a grim farm into a happy home is deeply reassuring. Flora Poste is a progressive young woman who goes to live with her cousins in the country. She uses her imagination to transform the gloomy life of each of her relatives, including Aunt Ada Doom ‘who saw something nasty in the woodshed’. The solutions are delightfully modern and cheering.