I ended up spending a lot of time on the wikipedia page for this one because as I read I wanted to understand better what was going on. Not the plot, which is relatively simple, but the behind the scenes kind of stuff that I clearly wasn’t understanding. This book is a satire of a minor “literary” or kind of hack writing subgenre of the bucolic/pastoral British novel. Specifically the highly sentimental treacly kind of nonsense that probably doesn’t exist nearly as much these days. […]
Like all really strong-minded women, on whom everybody flops, she adored being bossed about. It was so restful.
Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons