Finished: Cold Comfort Farm (Gibbons) An actual book with happy endings all around for once!! Even though it's supposed to be rather a satirical send-up of the drama filled British literature, it was nicely lighthearted for me. :-) Flora Poste is a young woman in England of the upper crust whose parents die. Because she was practically raised in boarding schools, she doesn't really mourn them much....but is left with "only" 100 pounds a month income after all her father's debts are paid. She decides to leave her socialite life and go visit her cousins (her mother's older sister's children) in the country in Sussex on Cold Comfort Farm. She mysteriously hears from her relatives that they wondered when they'd finally hear from her, since she had rights she'd been cheated out of. When she arrives at the run down, dreary farm, no one is very receptive to her. The Starkadders are all farm people, deeply ingrained in routine, and with an iron fist held over them by the fake-crazy matriarch, Aunt Ada Doom. If any Starkadders ever think of leaving the farm, Aunt Ada Doom has a "fit" and wails on and on about how she witnessed something awful in the shed when she was a young girl...so they all back off and kowtow to Aunt Ada. Flora can see right through Aunt Ada's act the first time she sees it, but she deals with Aunt Ada last. First, Flora spends several months helping each of her cousins and their children realize their dreams...even if it means leaving the farm! Aunt Ada's son, Amos Starkadder, though he runs the farm and toils each day, really longs to be a traveling, evangelical preacher! Flora encourages him to go ahead and travel, thus leaving the farm to his nephew, the beleaguered Reuben, who is the only one who wants to really make the farm succeed. Reuben is the son of Judith, the daughter of Aunt Ada. Judith fawns over her other son, Seth, the good-looking cad of a lady's man, and pretty much ignores Reuben. Judith is totally under her mother's thumb, and spends most of her time depressed. Flora also sees through Seth and when he tells her that he loves the "talkies" aka movies, she introduces him to a movie producer friend of hers who happens to be looking for the next Clark Gable, and voila....Seth is off to Hollywood! Reuben, who mistrusts Flora at first and thinks she's there to claim the farm, comes to respect Flora when she finally makes him believe she wants nothing to do with the farm and wants him to run it like he has always wanted. Elfine, a flighty granddaughter, who I'm not sure of her parentage, is in love with a rich neighbor boy...but Elfine has been raised in almost a Bohemian fashion. Flora takes Elfine under her wing and in a month's time, has given her a makeover and taught her to be more refined, so that when they both go to the 21st birthday party of the boy, he realizes how much he is also in love with Elfine and, after she wins over his mother, they are married. After Seth leaves, Judith drops into even more of a depression and hangs little black veils all over her son's pictures. Flora insists that Judith accompany her to London one day and introduces her to her psychiatrist friend who redirects Judith's interests to old churches, and he whisks her off for a six month tour around Europe! Finally, Flora heads back to Cold Comfort Farm and spends an entire day locked in the bedroom of the formidable Aunt Ada Doom. When she finally reappears, she insists to the remaining relatives that Aunt Ada will not only accept the marriage of Elfine, but will also spring another surprise on them! Sure enough, the day of Elfine's wedding, Aunt Ada Doom comes downstairs, a rarity in itself, all dressed to the nines and actually shocks everyone by enjoying the wedding. She then announces that she herself is off to Paris and that she's going to start enjoying life instead of wallowing at the farm. She entrusts the farm and the money-handling to Reuben and off she flies in a small airplane with a pilot! Her work at Cold Comfort Farm done, Flora finally calls Charles...the young man she had met and got along with swimmingly right before she began her journey. He had told her to call him any time and he would fly HIS little airplane down there and rescue her at a moment's notice. They correspond by letters the entire time that Flora is there, and when she feels her mission is complete, she calls up Charles to come and get her. He lands his airplane and bounds toward her and they fall into a passionate embrace. He asks Flora to marry him and she says yes! Her only regrets are that she doesn't find out what exactly those rights of hers were, i.e., what the mysterious family story was...and she doesn't ever find out what it is Aunt Ada Doom saw in the shed as a young girl! Anyway...Finally, a happily ever after! :-)