The Country Life (novel) 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 position as carer to Martin, the wheelchair-bound teenage son of the wealthy and eccentric Madden family, in a farm near a small village in rural Sussex. The
Star of the Sea (novel) mystery in that readers are vaguely informed of the identity of the murderer and the victim early in the novel, but the murder does not take place until the closing pages of the novel, and murder does not carry the full idea or sense of the killing. As the writer was clearly aware in choosing the name, the term "Star of the Sea" has deep roots in Catholic tradition. Our Lady, Star of the Sea - a translation of the Latin "Stella Maris" - is the Blessed Virgin Mary in her aspect as a guide and protector to those who