A delightful witty tale (set in the "near future" when written in 1932) of the efforts of Flora Poste (poverty-stricken in a genteel sort of way) to civilize her earthy eccentric cousins, the Starkadders of Cold Comfort Farm, Sussex, where she has decided to live after her parents died leaving her a meager income of 100 pounds a year. Not only must she deal with a slew of Biblically named male cousins (whose wives stay in the village to avoid the wrath of Aunt Ada Doom), but there are the animals---a bull named Big Business, and cows called Aimless, Feckless, Pointless and Graceless, one of whom is always misplacing a hoof or a leg. Daft, altogether. I enjoyed it a lot.
Reviewed in 2009

Hilarious. This novel gives D.H.Lawrence what he deserves: advice about hygiene and a good laugh. ( )

Quirky English story. I could see how it would be made into a movie. Easy read. ( )

Cold Comfort Farm is, as one friend described, "a wonderfully snippy takeoff of rural-England novels full of steaming middens and dripping thatches, and what happens when a plucky young heroine decides to fix things up; a bit like what might happen if Austen's Emma visited some of Thomas Hardy's characters."

That said, it's been a long time since I've been this happy to be done with a book! My friend's thoughts above sum up the book perfectly, and it's probably a great read if one is in the mood for that. Apparently, I was NOT in the mood for that this week and the book ended up being irritating. It could be, also, that the characters reminded me too much of my own rural family. Ha! Still, I'm happy to have completed one more book from the 1001 Books to Read Before You Die list. But, like several others I've read from that list, I probably could have died without reading this one. ( )

Flora, a socialite in reduced circumstances due to the unmourned deaths of her parents, goes to live with her distant, eccentric country cousins. The family is under the thumb of domineering Aunt Ada (she who saw “something nasty in the woodshed”), who refuses to let any of her kin leave the farm. Flora, however, is determined to change the family’s circumscribed lives for the better.

All sources agree that Cold Comfort Farm is a parody of the British agrarian novel. Unfortunately, I have not read many of those, so I didn’t always get the joke. Still, this satire makes for a pleasant afternoon read while sick a-bed. ( )