Monday, November 16, 2015

COLD COMFORT FARM by STELLA GIBBONS

Maybe funny when written in the early 1930s , a bit like watching Monty Python nowadays , its humour has not aged well.It deserves due credit for satirising and mocking the classic , almost critically untouchable , Novels on the 19th century but it is itself a parody of what constituted top-down humour of the wit of old high class educated self-declared arbiters of taste patronising the lower orders to what values to aspire.

It is a fitting endnote that two sequels to the Novel were both flops , which probably ties in with the readers of the 40s and 50s already out-growing the age of having culture , especially humour , being spoon fed from top-down by the class system and instead embracing the humour of the grassroots  developing their own thoughts, ideas, opinions and ultimately cultural and political agendas as this review from the Guardian Paper tentatively alludes.

It is best to end with a review from someone who likes the Book , though even he admits it has aged somewhat.

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