white_hart

One of the nicest things about having rediscovered the ability to read books at a reasonable speed is feeling that I have the time to re-read old favourites rather than having to keep making progress through the pile of new-to-me books waiting to be read. New books are all well and good, but there's a lot to be said for revisiting an old friend, particularly at this time of year, and Cold Comfort Farm is always a joy.

First published in 1932, Cold Comfort Farm parodies the novels of rural hardship that were popular at the time, setting its heroine, the wonderful Flora Poste, down in the middle of the decaying farm owned by her cousins the Starkadders and ruled over by Aunt Ada Doom, who saw something nasty in the woodshed when she was a little girl. In only a few months Flora's common-sense, no-nonsense approach sorts out all the Starkadders' problems and sees everyone set on a much happier course in life. It's a wonderfully funny book (my favourite bits are the parts dealing with Mr Mybug, a DH Lawrencian writer who is working on a life of Branwell Brontë which will prove that he wrote all of the books usually attributed to his sisters, and Amos Starkadder's preaching to the Church of the Quivering Brethren) but also makes some quite serious points about women's autonomy and its relationship to happiness (I love Flora's championing of contraception to Meriam, the hired girl, whose susceptibility to long summer evenings when the mysterious sukebind is in bloom has resulted in her becoming the unmarried mother of four children).

Although I know the book so well I could almost recite bits of it from memory (helped, I suspect, by having listened to tapes of the 1981 Radio 4 adaptation on many long car journeys in my childhood) I always forget just how science fictional it is; it's set about 20 years after publication, in an England where videophones and air travel are common and where Lambeth has replaced Mayfair as the fashionable heart of London, although the mores and social structures remain those of the early 1930s and the SF elements don't really make much difference to the story (both the radio adaptation and the 1995 TV adaptation leave them out completely). The book is also a bit spikier than both of the adaptations, which are definitely gentle comedies and don't have nearly as much of a feminist slant as the book does.

Anyway, re-reading it was definitely a good way to spend a January weekend, and I always enjoy the idea that all it takes to change everything for the better is common sense, compassion and a determined refusal to believe that things can't be improved.