Cold Comfort Farm, by Stella Gibbons. One of my top five favorite books of all time. As you can see, I am engaged in literally loving it to bits.
Among the many things I love about it, here is a little speech of the heroine’s:
“When I am fifty-three or so I would like to write a novel as good as Persuasion, but with a modern setting, of course. For the next thirty years or so I shall be collecting material for it. If anyone asks me what I work at, I shall say, ‘Collecting material.’ No one can object to that. Besides, so I shall be.”
At last, an answer I can give when people ask me what I do.
If you care to know, and I don’t see why you wouldn’t, my other four desert-island books are currently Pride and Prejudice, Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour, an Introduction, Jane Eyre and The Changeover.