This book was a top recommendation from a fellow bookclubber a few years ago and, while it’s been in my pile for a while, only made it to the top this year, primarily as a way of trying to start the year off with a good book.
Cold Comfort Farm is very much a novel of its time in both story and language but is also an unusual twist on several mid-war English tropes with some fairly modern twists. Following the adventures of common sense advocate Flora Poste, the story takes us to the farm with its strange collection of characters. Many of these could very easily have ended up as farce, but Gibbons creates a depth of realism and empathy with each such that you end up rooting for everyone. By the end of the novel, Flora has brought peace and joy to the farm and its inhabitants with charm and grace, with a modicum of chicanery and big doses of boldness reflecting the emerging emancipation of the times. Flora both defies and capitalizes on the moral codes of the times, and in the end literally flies off into the sunset for her next adventure.
The novel has a Dorothy L. Sayers feel in the language and style, and the story felt like a mash-up of Emma (all the schemes to get people married) and Mary Poppins (the way she changes everyone’s lives and then leaves). I loved it. A great read to start the year.
Fate: likely the little book library, as I’m not likely to read it again soon, and it is readily available should I want to.
3 – before 1939
8 – female author
9 – made into a film
11 – referral from you
17 – place name
25 – new author to me
rclr 
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