A collection of short stories, some better than others. ( )

Some say these stories are shallow, quaint, unsophisticated ... just what I wanted - sweet stories for December. ( )

"...will remind you that Christmas is a magical time of year and romance can blossom in the least likely of places"
By sally tarbox on 17 November 2017
Format: Kindle Edition
Sixteen short stories set in the 1930s; only one is actually set at Cold Comfort Farm (the weakest in my view, just a skit on the gloomy characters as they sip swede wine and hunt the charm in the pudding that will grant an UNLUCKY new year.
Otherwise they're pleasant, readable tales, such as you'd find in a good magazine. Failing relationships and new romances; a murderer apprehended; an ex-wife visiting her children... Perhaps the most memorable for me was 'Sisters', where a kind-hearted lady invites a 'bad girl' to be her servant...and lives to regret it.
Enjoyable though a couple of the later ones irritate, as women realise they need to hang on to their man at all cost (And I'm far from a feminist!) ( )

it was a bit weird to be reading this at the same time as Mary McCarthy's The Company she keeps. Although this is from a slightly earlier period in the 20c there were some similarities and aspects that invited comparison. I'm not really a short story fan, but at least Stella Gibbons' stories were short (unlike the novella length of McCarthy) and followed more the short story tradition. Some of the stories seemed as if they belonged to a well-written edition of People's Friend and I did start to feel that if I were informed once more that happiness for women was to be found in being par of a marriage and having children and being supportive of my husband (despite it being dressed up a bit to be about women being individuals and having their own needs too) I would throw the book across the room. Also I hate Cold Comfort Farm, but fortunately there was only one story set there. Quite a few of these somehat annoying women worked in libraries. so much for stereotypes... ( )

A collection of short stories written and set pre-WWII. They are, perforce, very class conscious, with characters who behave as though they're in straitjackets made of conventionality. Some, like "The Little Christmas Tree" or "The Hoofer and the Lady," are quite sweet; people try to do the right thing and are gently, unobtrusively rewarded for it by making connections with other people who understand and appreciate them. Others are terrifyingly sad, like "Sisters," in which an older woman tries to help an unmarried mother and is destroyed by it. A great number of them are about being happy with what little one has, with being unambitious and (especially for women) pliant to convention. I found these dreadful and soul killing, and got quite depressed by the prospect of Gibbons' contemporaries reading them and thinking they were wise. I also quite enjoyed "The Murder Mark," an unconventional murder mystery, and the unrepentantly unserious characters in "Poor, Poor Black Sheep." To my surprise, I quite loathed the story I originally checked this book out for: "Christmas at Cold Comfort Farm" isn't funny, it's just a bundle of terrible people being terrible at each other, with a saccharine bit between Elfin and Dick Hawk-Monitor tacked on at the end. I think I was supposed to laugh at how awful everyone was, but they just seemed sad and poor. ( )