third in line...

Here here are, the third post in my alphabet series on favorite stories.  Are you ready?  Here's C!

Cold Comfort Farm

Can we say quirky? Can we say delightful? Can we say quintessentially British?

Hope so, because that about sums up Cold Comfort.

This is a story set in the early 1930's and tells how a young woman with only 100 pounds a year goes to live with distance relatives she has never met on their farm, Cold Comfort.  There's all the token characters: the poetic waif, the lusty farm boy cousin, the ranting father who becomes a hell and brimstone preacher, the nervous mother, the overbearing grandmother.  And then there is Cousin Flora, and she can't abide a mess.  So she sets about fixing up the farm and it's occupants. 

I've read the novel and watched the film, and I have to say, I prefer the film slightly over the book.  You get a better feel for the story with the very unique characters fleshed out.

I can't remember who introduced me to this gem (very possibly it was Dara, but it might have been a fellow English student during my Jane Austen class...the memory is vague), but I'm ever so thankful.

The fact that the story of young Flora Post hits on so many Austen truisms didn't hurt at all.  It's like a slightly updated Austen mash-up.  And you just have to love a girl who says, "I just love the phrase, 'A marriage has been arranged.' When I feel like it, I'll arrange one."

Save yourself a few hours and go straight to the movie on this one, and don't forget, there is something nasty in the woodshed!