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Title: House of Doom and Mirth
Review: This book is a very funny parody of the Gothic pretensions of D.H. Lawrence-style rural melodramas. In this Gibbons is continuing the Jane Austen tradition of comparing reason and emotion and contrasting her works with Gothic novels. The characters at Cold Comfort Farm are hilariously stereotyped ones from Lawrence and others. Gibbons is very good at puncturing the insufferable misogyny of male intellectuals of the period (Mr. Mybug being the main example) and showing how it covers a craving for some kind of connection.Although there are parallels with Austen, in Austen's books the heroine would have a moment where she realizes that she has also been wrong. That moment never comes with Flora, who is always right and reasonable all the time. She is thus almost a symbol rather than a character that develops over the novel. Still, it is a very funny novel from a woman's point of view. Definitely worth reading.
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