Christmas at Cold Comfort Farm and Other Stories Epub ¸✓ Dogsalonbristol

Reader Christmas at Cold Comfort Farm and Other Stories

Christmas at Cold Comfort Farm and Other Stories Epub ¸ ✓ Dogsalonbristol ☆ [Read] ➵ Christmas at Cold Comfort Farm and Other Stories By Stella Gibbons – Dogsalonbristol.co.uk A glorious collection of stories from the author of Cold Comfort Farm The title story tells of a typiA Cold Comfort Farm and PDF or glorious collection of stories Cold Comfort Kindle #180 from the author of Cold Comfort Farm The title story tells of a typical Christmas at the farm before the coming Christmas The one thing everyone seems to know of Stella Gibbons is that she wrote one book ' Cold Comfort Farm' and then she was destined to have it hang around her neck like the famous albatross for the rest of her less than stellar career This may or may not be true though I remember reading 'Here be dragons' and uite enjoying it but it cannot be denied that for myself CCF is probably the only book of hers that i would return to That was until I picked this up whilst Christmas shopping in Exeter Ironically the title short story is whilst drawing on the fondness of memory of that other book in my opinion uite easily the weakest story in the collection It is without purpose with little real humour and no drama Weak weak weak However that does not go for all the storiesIn the collection you gain a real sense of a woman who understood the missed opportunities for love and happiness that comes about as a result of people failing to speak or communicate clearly 'To love and to cherish' gently nudges us along the road of wasted life There are other examples of the same sadness and though very few stories end sadly or miserably 'The walled garden' 'A charming man' and 'sisters' all speak in different ways of expectation and loss of people reaching out in love or decency and being rebutted Sad but realThere is humour and a wonderful sense of the absurd and the sarcastic slant of some of Gibbons' comments are wonderfully understated but striking In 'The friend of man' an overlooked woman taken for granted seeks release but to what'She did not want second best She wanted the real thing; that real thing which her friends discovered like the gleeful followers of a treasure hunt every eighteen months or so 'OuchIn the same story Gibbons describes another of the characters thus'He stood balancing slightly on his heels sipping his womanish drink and wishing it was beer; he was as conspicous as a stone post in that fluid crowd'simple image but cleverly expresses a good deal about him his opinions and the insubstantial group of hangers on This seems a particular gift of Gibbons the ability to describe swiftly and concisely In the story 'Tame Wild Party' we find this sentence'He was green in the face and a lock of hair fell over one of his eyes giving him a Beardsleyish look which Joyce who had never heard of Beardlsey found singularly revolting'The genius of this little sentence is it tells us so much of Joyce Had she heard of Beardsley then her reaction would have been different because the decadent society of which she felt compelled to be a part would approve of his look and thus so would she I loved that concise and incisive whip of criticism implied without being obvious As i read these stories and there are 16 in all they come from different directions and nestle down with different atmospheres but I was struck by the fact that she wrote of the same class of people to a large extent as did Wodehouse In these stories however though there was not the same witticisms and clever turn of phrases that pepper his writing I found I liked the characters I was to a large extent rooting for them These stories will never have been going to set the world on fire but if you enjoy short stories then these have a simple value They are about relationship and missed opportunity about hero worship and its painful demise about the growth in self knowledge that leads to a new future and the very last story in the collection is a simple but clever one that ends on a note of really satisfying acknowledgment that it is never too late