Book Reflections – Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons

Wow! Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons is a surprising and fun book. Taken at face value, the narrative is too neat and implausible, but when considered as a parody of Gothic novels set in the countryside, it is funny and clever. I’ve only read some of the Gothic novels and a long time ago, so I suspect I missed a lot of the nuance of the parody that would have added to the humour.

Gibbons’ use of phonetically writing the pattern of speech used by farmers in Sussex adds to the humour. I often had no idea of what the equivalent word would be in English but it was fun trying. For example, an elderly farmhand cletters the dishes, which means the he’s washing them using a spiky stick as a brush, but I still can’t figure out what clettering means.

I really enjoyed this novel and I am happy to recommend it. I won’t give a plot summary here because it’s deliberately flimsy. I got most pleasure from the characters of Adam (the elderly farmhand), Mrs Beetle (the maid’s mother) and Mr Neck (the film producer). 

What on earth are you doing?

Cletterin’ the dishes, Robert Poste’s child.

But surely a you could do it much more easily with a little mop?…

I don’t want a liddle mop wi’ a handle. I’ve used a thorn twig these fifty years and more, and what was good enough then is good enough now. And I don’t want to cletter dishes more quickly neither. It passes the time away, and takes me thoughts off my liddle wild bird.

The edition I read starts with a letter Gibbons wrote to Anthony Pookworthy (an author of serious novels) that she admires. I enjoyed reading that letter and it put me in the mindset to be ready to be amused by the writing.

I must confess too, that I have more than once hesitated before the thought of trying to repay some fraction of my debt to you by offering you a book that was meant to be… funny. For your own books are not… funny.