Reread: Cold Comfort Farm

I was compiling my Top Ten list of character names a few weeks ago and was looking through my bookshelf when I came across Cold Comfort Farm.  I last read Cold Comfort Farm probably back in 2005/06 for the very simple reason that it was one of my favourite author, MegCabot's, favourite books.  I guess this is why it's so great for a new author to have a quote from an established author on the front of their book, (not that Stella Gibbons is a new author) because idiots like me will read what our favourite authors tell us to.  So, I read Cold Comfort back then and....I didn't love it.  I just didn't get it really, but I always intended to reread it in later years to see if things had changed.  So, I reread it and....things haven't changed all that much. 

Cold Comfort Farm follows the story of Flora Poste (great name, right?), a respectable girl who is orphaned at nineteen and so goes to live with her cousin Judith Starkadder and her rather uncivilised family at their farm.  Flora hopes to help the family become more respectable but this isn't easy.  All the family members feel bound to the farm because Aunt Ada Doom once saw something "nasty in the woodshed" and tells them all that she will go mad if they ever leave Cold Comfort Farm.  However, with Flora's help, the family members begin to follow their own paths and live lives of their own.

If I hadn't read any reviews or comments about this book then I'd think OK, yeah, it's a book and stuff happens and it's alright I guess but because I have read people's thoughts about this book I feel that I'm missing something.  Lots of comments say that this is a comic novel but I just didn't get it.  I want to find it funny, I'm itching to read funny books, but I just didn't.  Julie Burchill says that it's "Very probably the funniest book ever written" and I'm just sat here scratching my head going "eh, sorry, what?"  For me there were maybe a couple of amusing moments but it's nowhere near being the funniest book ever written.

Last time I read it I felt that I was missing out on something and that maybe I was too young to get it.  Now, after rereading Cold Comfort Farm, I still think that I'm not quite getting something but this time I'm thinking that maybe I'm never going to 'get it'.  That's the great thing about reading, though, that just because I don't get the humour of this book it doesn't mean that it isn't there or that other people won't get it.  So I'd be really interested to know what you think of Cold Comfort Farm if you've read it.  Did you have the same reaction I did?  Or  did you love it and find it hilarious?  And can you explain to me what it is that I'm just not getting?

One sentence back cover quote

Lots of people find Cold Comfort Farm hilarious so maybe you'll be one of them

Buy Cold Comfort Farm at Waterstones