Salon recommends

Something nasty in the woodshed and more of our favorite books.

Published September 16, 2002 5:54PM (EDT)

What we're reading, what we're liking

Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
I'm very partial to the 1995 film version of Gibbons' 1933 satirical novel about the adventures of Flora Poste, a young Londoner whose personal bible is a book entitled "The Higher Common Sense," and her efforts to bring harmony and tidiness to the gloomy rural Sussex outpost of her relatives in the Starkadder clan. It's perfect, hilarious holiday reading for anyone who groaned in English class when the syllabus shifted from Jane Austen to D.H. Lawrence -- complete with parodies of ponderously "elemental" nature descriptions and a mad, dictatorial aunt who's been holed up in the attic since she "saw something nasty in the woodshed." Reading it was like revisiting my favorite characters from the film and getting to know them even better. The only flaw is a whiff of the deplorable anti-Semitism to which all too many Britons of Gibbons' class and time were prone.

-- Laura Miller

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By Salon Staff

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