Even the farm animals merit Flora’s reforming zeal, as she is determined that the bull be allowed out of the barn where he seems to spend his entire life. Old Mrs Starkadder, living her life in her room, haunted by the memory of when she was two and saw “something narsty in the woodshed”, is a kind of matriarchal tyrant, refusing to allow any of the younger family members to leave the farm and make different lives for themselves. Young Elfine, wild as a woodland sprite, struggling to win the man she loves. Amos, the father, who is a terrible farmer, devotes his free time to hellfire preaching in the local town. Reuben, obsessive about improving the farm, but thwarted at every turn by his father and brother. There’s brooding Seth, shirt unbuttoned half-way down his chest to reveal bulging muscles and an ultra-masculine lustiness irresistible to all women (except Flora). She is however supremely self-confident in her ability to sort people’s lives out for them, and the inhabitants of Cold Comfort Farm offer her plenty of opportunities to indulge her passion for turning messiness into order. Frankly, if I were DH Lawrence, I’d have sued her! (If I hadn’t been dead at the time, obviously.)įlora is not decadent – she’s far too well brought up for that. But it quickly reveals that in fact it’s parodying just that kind of novel, and also the novels then in vogue showing the reverse – the kind of noble savage of the modernists, where those rustics are born with an innate honour and a stolid kind of decency as opposed to the sophisticate’s shallow decadence. So off she sets to meet the huge extended family of Starkadders who live on the farm…Īt first I feared this was going to be one of those many books that infest English literature where the sophisticated, upper-class, urbanite author mocks the unintelligent, uneducated and uncouth rustic yokels. But the letter from her cousin Judith Starkadder intrigues her – the address, Cold Comfort Farm, in Howling, Sussex, conjures visions in itself, and Judith’s vague hints of some kind of dark deed having being done to Flora’s father for which the Starkadders owe atonement is too tempting. All respond, and remarkably each of them offers her a home, though none of the homes sound terribly appealing to Flora. So instead she writes to all her relations, most of whom she has never met, asking if she can come and live with them.

Her friend suggests she should take some kind of training and get a job, but the idea of this holds no appeal for Flora. Once his debts are paid off, Flora only has an income of £100 a year. Orphan ed at the age of 20, Flora Poste discovers her father was not the rich man the world thought.

Cold comfort farm review