Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons

When I first picked up Cold Comfort Farm I expected it to be rather boring and rural, and to begin with, it was. However, after about 50 pages in, it started to get amusing, satirical and a feel-good sense to it.

Flora Poste is a 19 year old city-girl who is adopted and moves to Cold Comfort Farm where she meets the Starkadder family. Over the next few months she finds herself wanting to advise and change the family for the better.

I've read a few parodies in my time, but not found one that manages to parody all the rural classics in a way that this one does. Having read such novels as Wuthering Heights, Silas Marner and an attempt of Pride & Prejudice I found that I understood the jokes throughout and event managed some laughter here and there. This novel manages to parody such things as country lifestyle, language, appetites/eating habits and names. And it does it very well.

I, personally, found the book to be very optimistic throughout which helped with the reading, I suppose. Normally I've found books written in and around this time to be very dry and plain. Cold Comfort Farm is none of the above. However, one little grumble I do have is that the phonetics sometimes became somewhat annoying. Saying that, it wouldn't have been much of a parody if the language wasn't taken into account.

If you like literature but find yourself getting fed up of the Brontës' farms, have a read of this. If you've never read anything from the fin de siecle, do so before reading this in order to be able to fully understand the jokes within.

After reading this jolly novel and an article on the Guardian website about S. Gibbons, I've found myself tempted to pick up another of her books, to see if they really are some of the greatest comic novels ever.

This gets a 4/5

Deadline by Simon Kernick (review 2)

A few weeks ago I was at a friend's place sat on her sofa and waiting for said friend to get ready so we could go out and have a few drinks for her birthday. On that day I'd brought a spare copy of 'Deadline' round as I've been trying to get said friend to read some SK. Whilst waiting, I started reading the book and when I got home later that night I continued reading it, except it was a different copy.

Andrea Devern is a well-paid, middle-class business woman who gets home one night to find the house is unusually quiet. And then she recieves a phone call which turns her world upside-down. Some kidnappers have taken her daughter and they want half a million pounds in cash or the daughter dies.

The reader is then presented with an extreme game of Cat & Mouse. Like all of SK's books, 'Deadline' is well-researched with characters you both like and dislike. This was a book I had trouble putting down, constantly finding myself reading until 4-5am, wanting to know what happens in the next chapter as, like with all Simon Kernick tales, this one is filled with cliffhangers at almost every chapter-end.

Another thing I liked about this book was that it had some of my favourite Kernick characters in it, notably Tina Boyd and Mike Bolt. Along with this it had a number of scenes in the City in areas that I knew or recognised. This meant that I could easily picture certain roads and areas. Failing that there was always Google Maps.

I wouldn't say this is SK's best book, but it comes pretty close. If you're a fan of fast-paced action and the London ciminal underworld 'Deadline' is well worth a read.

This one gets a tidy 4/5 from me.