Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons (#37, Reader's Choice)

One of the librarians at the library saw me returning and asked me how it was. I answered honestly, telling her that I had not been able to get through it. Then I added that I was trying to read 50 books in one year and the Terror's daunting 800 page count became too much for me to handle when I had about 16 more books to go. She then threw out a recommendation. That is what brought me to Stella Gibbons' Cold Comfort Farm, a satire on the British Gothic novel.

I was skeptical at first because sometimes British novels tend to be overloaded with annoying frippery but this one proved to be as refreshing as the librarian said it would be. I enjoyed this strange little world filled with strange little characters. I mean, who doesn't get a kick out of a character that is obsessed with brassieres and travels around England looking for new ones? I certainly do.

Cold Comfort Farm is bizarre. I was unsure of how to categorize it. I wanted to put it under Contemporary Lit but it was written in 1932 so that doesn't work. I can't rightfully put it under Classics because I feel like it has to be on some list, or at least have more written about it to be considered such. The writing definitely demands an apt reader otherwise all the humor will be lost on deaf ears. It really is a funny book. One character, Adam, cleans dishes with a thorny twig. Another character, Aunt Ada Doom saw something nasty in the woodshed. Do we find out what that nasty thing was? You'll just have to read the book to find out.