Recommendations
Books Like Cold Comfort Farm
Flora Poste, common sense, and the Gothic nonsense she is determined to fix
If Cold Comfort Farm delighted you — Flora's effortless common sense, the Starkadders' magnificent gloom, Aunt Ada Doom's woodshed, the comedy of a sensible woman in a world of Gothic excess — these eight novels share its satirical wit, its English comedy of manners, or its irresistible female protagonists.
- 1Buy
The Pursuit of Love
by Nancy Mitford
Linda Radlett and her cousin Fanny growing up in an eccentric English upper-class household — Mitford's comedy of manners is the closest companion to Cold Comfort Farm in its portrait of an absurd English household presided over by a magnificently unreasonable paternal figure; where Flora fixes the Starkadders, Fanny observes the Radletts, but both novels are powered by the same dry delight in English eccentricity
- 2Buy
I Capture the Castle
by Dodie Smith
Cassandra Mortmain recording her family's chaotic life in a decaying Suffolk castle — Smith's beloved novel shares Cold Comfort Farm's portrait of an unconventional English household and its female narrator of particular intelligence; where Flora is the agent of comic resolution, Cassandra is the observer of comic chaos, but both novels are organized around the pleasure of an intelligent woman's voice applied to an eccentric world
- 3Buy
Excellent Women
by Barbara Pym
Mildred Lathbury, perpetually useful and quietly ironic — Pym's comedy of manners shares Cold Comfort Farm's mode of a female narrator who sees more than the people around her and records it with dry precision; where Flora is an outsider organizing other people's lives, Mildred is an insider observing other people's lives without being asked to; both are fundamentally about an intelligent woman's relationship to the demands others make on her
- 4Buy
A Handful of Dust
by Evelyn Waugh
Tony Last's marriage collapsing in the same social world as Cold Comfort Farm's — Waugh's satirical masterpiece is the darker contemporary of Gibbons's comedy: both are 1930s English social satires that take pleasure in the gap between their characters' pretensions and their actual circumstances, but where Gibbons's comedy ends with Flora's triumph, Waugh's ends with Tony stranded in the Amazon
- 5Buy
Decline and Fall
by Evelyn Waugh
Paul Pennyfeather sent down from Oxford and swept through a series of improbable adventures — Waugh's debut farce is the purest companion to Cold Comfort Farm's comic mode: both are English social comedies organized around the adventures of a protagonist of unusual equanimity in a world of extraordinary eccentricity; where Flora tidies up the eccentrics, Paul is simply carried along by them
- 6Buy
Scoop
by Evelyn Waugh
William Boot, a nature columnist, accidentally sent as a war correspondent to a fictional African country — Waugh's 1938 novel shares Cold Comfort Farm's structure of a decent, sensible protagonist swept into a world of absurdity; where Flora is competent and takes charge, William is incompetent and is taken charge of, but both novels produce the same comedy of a reasonable person in an unreasonable situation
- 7Buy
Three Men in a Boat
by Jerome K. Jerome
Three men and a dog taking a boating holiday on the Thames — Jerome's 1889 comic classic is the Victorian precursor to Cold Comfort Farm's mode of English comic writing: both are organized around the gap between aspiration and reality, both use a first-person narrator of complete self-satisfaction, and both depend on the English talent for finding the comic potential in ordinary discomfort
- 8Buy
Behind the Scenes at the Museum
by Kate Atkinson
Ruby Lennox narrating her family's history in York across the twentieth century — Atkinson's debut shares Cold Comfort Farm's interest in the secrets and repressions that English families carry through generations; where Gibbons's comedy is light and cheerful, Atkinson's is darker and more psychologically complex, but both use a female narrator to excavate what a family's official story conceals
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