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
Island (Huxley novel) Island (Huxley novel) Island is the final book by English writer Aldous Huxley, published in 1962. It is the account of Will Farnaby, a cynical journalist who is shipwrecked on the fictional island of Pala. "Island" is Huxley's utopian counterpart to his most famous work, the 1932 dystopian novel "Brave New World". The ideas that would become "Island" can be seen in a foreword he wrote in 1946 to a new edition of "Brave New World": Englishman William Asquith "Will" Farnaby deliberately wrecks his boat on the Polynesian shores of the Kingdom of Pala, thus forcing his entry to this