Cold Comfort Farm

Penguin Classics

By: Stella Gibbons

Narrated by: Pearl Mackie

Length: 8 hrs and 6 mins

Publisher's summary

Brought to you by Penguin.

This Penguin Classic is performed by Pearl Mackie, best known for her role in Dr Who.

When sensible, sophisticated Flora Poste is orphaned at 19, 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; child of nature Elfine; and crazed old Aunt Ada Doom, who has kept to her bedroom for the last 20 years. But Flora loves nothing better than to organise 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 (1932) is one of the best-loved comic novels of all time.

©2020 Stella Gibbons (P)2020 Penguin Audio

This was so much fun!

I saw the movie and enjoyed it immensely. However, the book was ever so much more entertaining and... we will never know what that nasty thing was in the shed or what happened to the goat.
Definitely worth the read. Cold Comfort Farm was just delightful through and through.

wonderful!

one of my favorite movies. I've seen it more times than I know! lol. after listening to the book, I realized there were few changes, but extra descriptions that were marvelous. I will listen again and again!

charming

The characters were intriguing and fun. The story was predictable. Happy ending for all involved

So good

Funniest literary spoof ever written - Matched with an excellent narrator. I’ve come back to this audiobook over and over. Read a little D H Lawrence first to get in the mood :-)

Loved the movie, loved the book!

This was such a delightful listen! It clarified all that was confusing in the movie and offered a much more complete story. The language is beautiful and witty and the characters unusual and fun. What a terrific respite from the world news!

Great Escape

Well written, amusing & intriguing.
Unusual & fascinating characters. All is easily visualized. A great escape for all.

Great send up of the country novel, super narration

This was great. I read another Stella Gibbons novel, Pure Juliet -- which is so unusual it prompts a lot of thought, and then thought I would try this. I've always been a Bronte and Austen fan, but have not been above creating comedy skits about them in my head -- especially the Brontes who were the original goths, and here it is done perfectly. There's definitely a third author type in there, like Wodehouse, maybe. However, the best bit is the narration. I looked at some other media versions of Cold Comfort and I think this is the best (it is actual book after all). Pearl Mackie is a fantastic narrator.

Took A Chance and Loved It

I found this book while browsing and decided to take a chance on it. It was very much worth it; the story parodies the typical "city girl goes to country and is transformed by the people there" and twists it. Flora doesn't need help; it's her relations the Starkadders who need saving. What with Elfine being wild and crazy, her brothers Seth and Reuben being too sexual and too wimpy, her mother Judith obsessing with Seth and then add her father, grandmother and cousins, you get the idea that the family is dysfunctional to say the least.

Flora is likeable and foreseeing, which helps her several times in the story. She can seem like a know-it-all at times but again, the Starkadders are just the opposite so it balances well. Pearl Mackie does an excellent narration of everyone; I still can't get Aunt Ada Doom's "I saw something nasty in the woodshed" out of my head because it sounds like the way Ada Doom would sound. And Mr. Meyerbug sounds as pretentious as you think he'd be, which made me sympathize with Flora even more.

Flora's relationship with Charles is probably the only thing I really didn't understand as much in the story. Flora's romantic interest in him doesn't really appear until later, or it's very subtle. I guess Gibbons was also parodying the idea that the city girl falls in love while in the country by having Flora already interested in someone in the city.

Overall it was a fun read and I'd definitely listen again!

Watch Out For The Woodshed

Fun and funny! Had no expectations and it took me a minute to get into, then really enjoyed. You probably won't if you don't understand that it's a spoof. Haven't read anything else like it, which also kept it fresh. Narrator was somewhat wooden at first, but improved enormously as the book went on. EXCEPT per usual, English narrators doing terrible American accents. Actually the accent itself wasn't too bad, but she chose to portray the Hollywood film director as a 1920's NY gangster.
I'd have given this 3 1/2 stars in the overall scheme of things, but rounded up instead of down.

Dazzling and funny!

The book was written in 1932 as a satire on many popular books of the period that assumed the life of the English countryside was seething with barely controlled passions and doom-laden outcomes. Lady Chatterley's Lover had just been published 1929. It is an extremely funny, witty book, much enhanced by Pearl Mackie's reading and I'm recommending it to all my friends.