Similarly there are references to TV phones and air taxis - although it is possible that Stella may have thought these would have been invented fifteen or twenty years into the future, when the novel was set. For example we’re told that Mrs Smiling was fortunate to inherit a property in Lambeth ‘before the rents in that district soared to ludicrous heights, following the tide of fashion as it swung away from Mayfair to the other side of the river’. The setting is largely what you would expect in those sorts of novels but with a tongue-in-cheek twist. I don’t want to spoil the novel for those that want to read it but the comic delights just keep on a comin’. Three pages into Chapter 1, when I read that Flora’s friend Mrs Smiling was ‘an authority on the cut, fit, colour, construction and proper functioning of brassieres’ I decided I was hooked. I like to think that she wiped away tears of laughter as she was writing certain bits - I certainly did when I was reading them. She just hatches a plan to go and live off her relatives and gets on with it – which pretty much epitomises the way she deals with things throughout the entire novel.Ĭold Comfort Farm is very funny, and a send-up of novels written about country life that were popular in the early 1930s, when Stella Gibbons was writing. Well, our heroine Flora faces this exact dilemma, but because of her background, breeding and education she’s not flustered by such trivialities. Within two weeks of each other, both of your parents die in a Spanish plague epidemic leaving you barely enough money to keep yourself in stockings and fans. You’re a resourceful young woman in your twentieth year and you’ve received the best education money can buy. Noella recently wrote a review of our book club for the Kentishtowner, you can read it here. Review written by Noella Bello Castro of Byte the Book, Book Club in Kentish Town.

Posted by Justine Solomons on 17 November 2012, in Recommendations

Cold comfort farm by stella gibbons