Stella Gibbons' Cold Comfort Farm
Somehow I've never read this before, and I guess I'm glad I did? I mean, this is really one of the silliest books I've ever read. Of course, that's mostly on purpose--it's a parody of a certain sort of rural novel that I've never read (besides, like, Thomas Hardy), but can easily imagine thanks to this one (it's like Northanger Abbey and whatever melodramatic gothic novels Austen was playing with--you don't really have to be familiar with the source material to get the humor). Luckily protagonist Flora, recently orphaned and moved to the farm of some distant cousins with a Terrible Secret, isn't having any of those shenanigans. She also totally messes with a guy who claims Branwell Bronte wrote all of his sisters' books. I did spend a lot of this alternately giggling and boggling while reading, for sure. But all's well that ends well, and it certainly ends in a pretty adorable way. B+.
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