If you like Emma, maybe you won’t see the similarity Flora never has to learn the lesson that her meddling isn’t appreciated, because it all actually turns out splendidly for her and everyone else. I was talking to a friend who has read this book, and we agreed that Flora is reminiscent of Jane Austen’s Emma, except we actually *liked* Flora. If you’re not paying close attention you may even miss the few futuristic references (video phones, a mention of the British-Nicaraguan war of 1946), and that’s one of the reasons I think the whole conceit is dumb and I’d rather forget it exists. I don’t approve of them and would prefer to ignore them, but for some reason the book is set sometime in the future of its publication date, perhaps the late 1950s (Clark Gable is referenced as a long-ago movie star, so maybe even later?). Let me just get out of the way that Cold Comfort Farm has some weird, and to me, out of place futuristic elements.

(It may have been part of the satire, but it was never quite clear to me if Flora needed the financial support of her relations – at first, with the suggestion of employment, I thought she did, but later she seemed to have very little concern in that direction, so maybe it was just a case of it being socially unacceptable for her to be unmarried and unemployed?) Instead, she decides to apply to a number of distant relatives for a place to stay. Mary suggests that Flora get a job, but she’ll have none of that. “The education bestowed on Flora Poste by her parents had been expensive, athletic and prolonged and when they died within a few weeks of one another during the annual epidemic of the influenza or Spanish Plague which occurred in her twentieth year, she was discovered to possess every art and grace save that of earning her own living.”įlora first goes to stay with her widowed friend, Mary Smiling, with whom every man seems to fall in love. Our heroine is characterized thus early on: The book parodies the sort of rural dramas that I’ve probably read too many of in earnest (in my defense, I actually *like* most of them). I’ve thought about picking up this satirical novel before, but it was published in 1932, so is it old enough to be a classic? Then I remembered that my rules are self-created, and thus, bullshit, and so I bought Cold Comfort Farm off of Amazon (for the low, low price of $1.99, which was somewhat explained by numerous typos). The vast majority of classics that I read are 18th century English or American books downloaded for free from Project Gutenberg, and many tend to be on the ponderous side. Applying my self-created rules for classic literature reads, “lighter, quick and funny” don’t abound.

After I finished Little Women, a book it somehow took me five months to read, I wanted to read something a bit lighter, quicker, and funny.

Cold comfort farm author