Stella Gibbons

'We are not like other folk, maybe, but there have always been Starkadders at Cold Comfort Farm . . . ' Sensible, sophisticated Flora Poste has been expensively educated to do everything but earn a living. When she is orphaned at twenty, she decides her only option is to descend on relatives - the doomed Starkadders at the aptly named Cold Comfort Farm. There is Judith in a scarlet shawl, heaving with remorse for an unspoken wickedness; raving old Ada Doom, who once saw something nasty in the woodshed; lustful Seth and despairing Reuben, Judith's two sons; and there is Amos, preaching fire and damnation to one and all. As the sukebind flowers, Flora takes each of the family in hand and brings order to their chaos. Cold Comfort Farm is a sharp and clever parody of the melodramatic and rural novel. 'Screamingly funny and wildly subversive' Marian Keyes, Guardian

Cold Comfort Farm

Gelaine Trinidad

When a well-educated young socialite in 1930s England is left orphaned and unable to support herself at age twenty-two, she moves in with her eccentric relatives on their farm. Reissue.

Sarah Sammis

Wynter

What a lovely book. 
If only I could talk the way Gibbons write, I would be so eternally happy. 
This novel doesn't take itself seriously and pokes fun of many classics. 
Cold Comfort Farm is going on the list of the fictional places I want to visit the most.

The End.

Kali Olson

Flora Poste is an elegant, sophisticated young lady living in glamorous London in the 1930s. She’s also an orphan, and her determined sense of order demands that she put her good taste to work and find a new branch of the family to fix. She settles on the oddest bunch she can find—an aunt, uncle, and cousins who live deep in the country on Cold Comfort Farm. Armed with her journal, several issues of Vogue magazine, and a tall pair of rubber boots, Flora sets out to drag Cold Comfort Farm into the modern fashionable age. This act of generosity proves a bit more challenging when Flora finds herself confronted with an over-sexed, moving-picture-obsessed cousin; an uncle who preaches until his congregation literally quivers in Fear of the Lord; a poetry-writing, free-spirited young sprite who’s in love with the dashing lord next door; and a great aunt who’s “seen something nasty in the woodshed.” A parody of the earthy, melodramatic novels of D.H. Lawrence and Thomas Hardy, Cold Comfort Farm is, quite simply, hilarious. The 1995 film version (starring Kate Beckinsdale as the no-nonsense, never-give-up Flora) wonderfully captures Gibbons’ sense of the odd, the eccentric, and the absurd, and genuinely brings the page to life.

Liz Carpenter

The title always put me off this one - I just assumed that it was going to be grey and depressing. It was not. Completely hilarious in a sweetly biting old-fashioned way.

Melody Izard

This is a funny book – in the manner of a P.G. Wodehouse read – but not AS funny as the Jeeves collection, in my opinion. Flora’s parents die and she doesn’t want to go to work so she writes all her relatives to find one willing to take her in. She gets a reply from her country relatives, the Starkadders of Cold Comfort Farm who seem to feel they have a debt to pay to her. Aunt Ada Doom runs the farm from her upstairs bedroom and insists that no one leave the farm, or have any fun, for she has seen something “nasty in the woodshed.” 
Flora decides that she must go about setting everyone straight so she begins tidying up the place solving all manner of problems as she goes. A quick read. I’d say yeah, you should read this.

Sarah Campbell

Giada

When sensible, sophisticated Flora Poste is orphaned at nineteen, she decides her only choice is to descend upon relatives in deepest Sussex. At the aptly named Cold Comfort Farm, she meets the doomed Starkadders- cousin Judith, heaving with remorse for unspoken wickedness; Amos, preaching fire and damnation; their sons, lustful Seth and despairing Reuben; and crazed old Aunt Ada Doom, who saw 'something nasty in the woodshed'. But Flora loves nothing better than to organize other people, and resolves to take each of them in hand. A hilarious parody of rural melodramas, Cold Comfort Farm (1932) is one of the best-loved comic novels of all time.

Joyce

Brendan 

maitha mana

Lindy

Cait🪼

Pierke Bosschieter

Wilde

Cold comfort farm

Nora 

When sensible, sophisticated Flora Poste is orphaned at nineteen, she decides her only choice is to descend upon relatives in deepest Sussex. At the aptly named Cold Comfort Farm, she meets the doomed Starkadders, an eccentric group of relatives suffering from a wide variety of ailments. But Flora loves nothing better than to organize other people. Armed with common sense and a strong will, she resolves to take each of the family in hand. A hilarious and merciless parody of rural melodramas, Cold Comfort Farm is one of the best-loved comic novels of all time.

Cold Comfort Farm

Reviews