I have to say, I have been SLEEPING on this book! It’s so funny, yet for some reason, I had it on my TBR for years (I think maybe even a decade) and didn’t think to check it out until recently. But the book had me from the first page, nay, from the first line:

“The education bestowed upon Flora Poste by her parents had been expensive, athletic and prologned; 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.”

And off the book goes. I half expected this to be the sort of parody where Flora tries to improve things but fails miserable (but doesn’t realise she fails miserably) but actually, she succeeds. She arrives at Cold Comfort Farm, exactly as the name suggests – a forbidding, dour place where the Matriarch (Aunt Ada) is kept in constant terror (and by extension, the rest of the family) since she saw something nasty in the woodshed. No one is happy, and Flora by sheer wit and willpower, improves things by getting the needed people out of the way, improving an attractive but wild cousin, and of course, giving Aunt Ada a complete attitude adjustment.

This could easily be a book that went over the top, or a book that became too preachy because of how “improving” Flora is, but Gibbons keeps things firmly in hand. The tropes like the rich young man of the house falling in love with someone unsuitable, fire and brimstone preaching, and that one widowed friend whom everyone falls in love with are all there, but somehow never become too much. The only thing Gibbons allows to overflow is the purple prose, which she helpfully marks out to us with asterisks as areas of great prose. That little tongue-in-cheek nod to the melodramatic language novels can provide showed me what complete control she had over the whole thing.

And it was the afterword that showed me the book had layers to it. It’s not just about Flora coming in and bossing everyone to their betterment (though I really enjoyed that), it’s also a story about not letting someone’s misery control the lives of everyone around them. It was obvious when pointed out to me, and perhaps I shouldn’t have pointed it out to you, but I didn’t catch it while reading so maybe you won’t either.

Honestly, I really, really enjoyed it. I can see myself coming back to this book (actually, I think it would be fun to read this with Northanger Abbey – maybe I’ll do that soon). If you haven’t read it, I highly encourage you to do so.