A Trip to Cold Comfort Farm

by Charlotte Reads Classics

Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons

This book seems to have a bit of a weird reputation: people who have read it always give such glowing reviews of it; a lot of people have heard of it; but I don’t think many people want to read it. I think it might be the name – Cold comfort sounds a bit grim, and the farm part probably puts some people off too. Until very recently all of Stella Gibbons’ other books were out of print (in the UK at least) but Vintage have just re-jacketed some others.

Cold Comfort Farm is the funniest book I’ve read in ages, and the humour isn’t dated despite it being first published in 1949. It mocks a lot of the modernist taking to the country type books (take that D. H. Lawrence). Definitely a very ‘English’ book. Stella Gibbons has created such a fantastic set of characters and named them perfectly: who else calls her matriarch Ada Doom?!

A very good start to my penguin classics reading project: funny, clever, literary.