The Country Life (novel) "The Country Life" won a 1998 Somerset Maugham Award, and was selected as one of the Notable Books for Adults of 2000 by the American Library Association. The Country Life (novel) The Country Life is a comedic novel by Rachel Cusk, first published in 1997, which draws on Stella Gibbons' "Cold Comfort Farm" and Charlotte Brontë's "Jane Eyre". It won a 1998 Somerset Maugham Award. The novel is a comedy that draws on both "Cold Comfort Farm" by Stella Gibbons and "Jane Eyre" by Charlotte Brontë. Stella Benson, the first-person narrator, abruptly abandons her life in London to take a
Mavis Cheek Arnold Bennett, Stella Gibbons, William Boyd and Beryl Bainbridge as "literary heroes". For "A Good Read" on the BBC Radio 4 programme of that name broadcast on 7 June 2011 she chose "Micka" by Frances Kay. Her own novel, "Janice Gentle Gets Sexy", was chosen for A Good Read in its year of paperback publication, 1994. "The Sex Life of My Aunt" (2002), her tenth novel, draws liberally on her own background and childhood, including something of her family uneasy relationships. There are strong autobiographical elements also in her twelfth novel, "Yesterday's Houses" (2006), about the beginning of a woman's