Cold Comfort Farm (Abridged Edition) - Softcover

Gibbons, Stella

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1607960214 ISBN 13: 9781607960218

Publisher: BN Publishing, 2008

Synopsis

In Gibbons's classic tale, a resourceful young heroine finds herself in the gloomy, overwrought world of a Hardy or Bronte novel and proceeds to organize everyone out of their romantic tragedies into the pleasures of normal life. Flora Poste, orphaned at 19, chooses to live with relatives at Cold Comfort Farm in Sussex, where cows are named Feckless, Aimless, Pointless, and Graceless, and the proprietors, the dour Starkadder family, are tyrannized by Flora's mysterious aunt, who controls the household from a locked room. Flora's confident and clever management of an alarming cast of eccentrics is only half the pleasure of this novel. The other half is Gibbons's wicked sendup of romantic cliches, from the mad woman in the attic to the druidical peasants with their West Country accents and mystical herbs. Anne Massey's skillful rendering of a variety of accents will make this story more accessible to American audiences. Recommended for both literary and popular collections.

About this title

About the Author

Stella Gibbons was born in London in 1902. She went to North London Collegiate School and studied journalism at University College, London. She then worked for ten years on various papers, including the Evening Standard. Her first publication was a book of poems, The Mountain Beast (1930), and her first novel, Cold Comfort Farm (1932), won the Femina Vie Heureuse Prize. Amongst her other novels are Miss Linsey and Pa (1936), Nightingale Wood (1938), Westwood (1946), Conference at Cold Comfort Farm (1949) and Beside the Pearly Water (1954). Stella Gibbons died in 1989.

From AudioFile

Narrator Anna Massey has her work cut out for her as she takes on the eccentric Starr family of Cold Comfort Farm. Massey conveys humor and even a touch of suspense. The sights, sounds, even the smells of the farm are evoked amid the minutia of Gibbons's details. The very sounds of the words have as much effect as the tale they tell. Gibbons's use of melodrama popular in the early 1900's, to tell a romantic tale while simultaneously satirizing the genre, makes Massey's job more challenging. She manages quite well. The resurrection of the farm from brooding ineffectuality to normal human activity is worth listening to over and over. D.P.D. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine

Edition details

• Publisher: BN Publishing
• Publication date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1607960214
• ISBN 13: 9781607960218
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 128