What: I am currently snowbound, basically trapped in my apartment post-snowpocalypse. You know what would be worse? Being trapped on a farm with a religious maniac, an oversexed farm hand, a maudlin would-be sprite, and a ghoulish obsessive. Also someone named Urk. Such is the situation of Flora Poste for much of Stella Gibbon's comic novel. Somehow, though, our very modern heroine manages to tidy it all up with firm, calm, undeterred practicality.
Comparable to: It's a little like Mary Poppins walked into a D.H. Lawrence or Thomas Hardy novel and started telling everyone to pull themselves together, for goodness' sake.
Representative quote: "True, in Cheltenham and in Bloomsbury gentlemen did not say in so many words that they ate women in self-defense, but there was no doubt that that was what they meant."
You might not like it if: The whole thing just sounds kind of annoying to you.
How to get it: Penguin has all kinds of editions out there, including one for your Kindle. Oh, yes, there's a movie, too. It is not at all disappointing! You could even watch it first, so you can picture Kate Beckinsale, Joanna Lumley, Ian McKellen, Eileen Atkins, Stephen Fry, Rufus Sewell, and the rest in the appropriate roles.
Connection to previous Wreckage: In Rec. #31: Don't Point That Thing at Me, I mentioned a sequel titled Something Nasty in the Woodshed. That phrase comes from, and is repeated often in, Cold Comfort Farm.
[Originally posted 2/2/11.]
This was an early favorite of mine and remains so. It accompanied me on several visits to England and I have two filmed versions. . .the
ReplyDeleteone you mentioned and the original BBC-TV version
shown in the inaugural season of PBS's Masterpiece
Theatre, with Alastair Sim as Amos Starkadder. Both are well worth watching again. . .& again.