Stella Gibbons detestation of pomposity and pretence. Truss has described Gibbons as "the Jane Austen of the 20th century", a parallel which the novelist Malcolm Bradbury thought apt; Flora Poste in "Cold Comfort Farm", with her "higher common sense", is "a Jane-ite heroine transformed into a clear-eyed modern woman". Bradbury also observed that many of Gibbons's novels end in Austen-like nuptials. Truss highlights the importance that Gibbons places on detachment as a necessary adjunct to effective writing: "Like many a good doctor, she seems to have considered sympathy a peculiar and redundant emotion, and a terrible waste of time." This matter-of-fact quality
Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle is a novel by Vladimir Nabokov published in 1969. "Ada" began to materialize in 1959, when Nabokov was flirting with two projects, "The Texture of Time" and "Letters from Terra". In 1965, he began to see a link between the two ideas, finally composing a unified novel from February 1966 to October 1968. The published cumulation would become his longest work. "Ada" was initially given a mixed reception. But, writing in "The New York Times Book Review", noted scholar Alfred Appel called it "a great work of art,