Lovers of Stella Gibson's Cold Comfort Farm (her first novel), should know this is a wiser, deeper and funnier book. Using fairy tales and Shakespeare comedies as plot devices (The Tempest, A Mid-Summer's Night's Dream, Cinderella, Snow White and Red Rose....)and set in an Essex Village in 1938, it examines (punctures) the British class system and middle-class snobbery, anti-semitism and the totalitarian family system. The characters are funny, human and the writing is wonderful...and it ends as all comedies should in a marriage (or two) and paired sets of lovers...