Its occupants are nearly insufferable: Mr. Poor, lovely Viola has been left penniless and alone after her late husband’s demise, and is forced to live with his family in their joy less home. Recommended for both literary and popular collections.Ī sly and satirical fairytale by the author of Cold Comfort Farm Unavailable for decades, Stella Gibbons’s Nightingale Wood is a delightfully modern romance ripe for rediscovery by the many fans of Cold Comfort Farm. Anne Massey’s skillful rendering of a variety of accents will make this story more accessible to American audiences. The other half is Gibbons’s wicked sendup of romantic cliches, from the mad woman in the attic to the druidical peasants with their West Country accents and mystical herbs. Flora’s confident and clever management of an alarming cast of eccentrics is only half the pleasure of this novel. Flora Poste, orphaned at 19, chooses to live with relatives at Cold Comfort Farm in Sussex, where cows are named Feckless, Aimless, Pointless, and Graceless, and the proprietors, the dour Starkadder family, are tyrannized by Flora’s mysterious aunt, who controls the household from a locked room. Probably one for the Stella Gibbons completists.įirst published in 1935, this edition is by Vintage, 2021.In Gibbons’s classic tale, a resourceful young hero*ine finds herself in the gloomy, overwrought world of a Hardy or Bronte novel and proceeds to organize everyone out of their romantic tragedies into the pleasures of normal life. However, there is only a vague plot and the ending is very weak. The writing is interesting at times, describing what it was like to be in your late teens and early twenties in 1930s London, for example. Having read this book and then about Stella Gibbons’ life, this is so close to reality that it doesn’t seem much like fiction. She dreads them following in their father’s footsteps. At first, they enjoy living in the cottage, but the housekeeping and managing servants falls to Sophia, who is also worried about the partying her brothers get up to. Sophia is working for a newspaper, while Harry is an actor and Francis leaves school for office life. While waiting for the doctor’s surgery to be sold, the siblings move into a little old cottage on Enbury Heath and try to avoid the well-intentioned meddling of their aunts and uncles. They seem to blame their father for her early death. Their doctor father was an alcoholic and womaniser who made their home life a misery, while their mother was calm and mild. The story follows young adults Sophia, Harry and Francis after the deaths of their parents. I’ve read most of her work now and this one is low in my ranking, but I do appreciate how Gibbons used the novel to explore her feelings about her turbulent early years.

Published only 3 years after her debut, Cold Comfort Farm, this is a thinly-veiled autobiographical novel which is set in Enbury (i.e.

Novel by stella gibbons