My second book for this year’s Dean Street December, hosted by Liz at Adventures in Reading, Running and Working from Home, is Stella Gibbons’ 1959 novel A Pink Front Door. I didn’t love the only other Gibbons book I’ve read, Cold Comfort Farm – I know I’m in the minority, but I just didn’t find it as funny as everyone says it is – so I wanted to give her another chance. I’m pleased to report that I enjoyed this one much more.
The house with the pink front door is home to Daisy and James Muir and their baby son (whom Daisy always refers to as James Too). Daisy is one of those people everyone turns to when they are in need of help and who enjoys trying to solve their problems for them. In post-war London these problems often involve housing and the novel opens with Daisy finding new lodgings for Tibbs, an Eastern European refugee who is struggling to settle into a new life, and Molly Raymond, a young woman who keeps embarrassing herself by chasing after unsuitable men. However, when Daisy’s old university friend, Don, tells her that he is also searching for somewhere to live with his wife and three young children, this proves to be much more of a challenge. Daisy knows that Mrs Cavendish has the whole top floor of her house available to rent, but will that snobbish woman agree to share her home with people who are ‘not her sort’?
The novel shifts between the perspectives of some of the characters mentioned above and also several others, including Daisy’s elderly aunts, Marcia and Ella, who have lived together for many years since neither of their lives went quite the way they had expected when they were younger. Through the stories of Marcia and Ella, Gibbons explores some of the issues facing older unmarried women, as well as the different but equally frustrating ones faced by younger, married women – Don’s wife Katy, for example, who has a degree in chemistry which she is unable to use because she’s now looking after three children and being treated like a servant by Mrs Cavendish in return for the use of her spare rooms.
For most of the book, the plot moves along at a slow, steady pace; I would describe this as much more of a character-driven novel and I did enjoy getting to know all of the characters, even the unpleasant ones. There’s some drama later on when Daisy’s long-suffering husband begins to lose patience with being neglected all the time and decides to take drastic action – and then another dramatic development right at the end of the book which was unexpected and, in my opinion, unnecessary. Still, I got on with A Pink Front Door better than I did with the much more popular Cold Comfort Farm. I’m glad I decided to try Stella Gibbons again and am looking forward to reading more of her work now.
She Reads Novels 
I liked this one, too, but my memory of my long-past reading of Cold Comfort Farm is that I liked it a lot.
Most people seem to have liked Cold Comfort Farm, so maybe I was just in the wrong mood for it!
That can definitely happen. And I don’t know what I would think about it now. Our tastes in books can change at different ages.
Well, how about that? I knew nothing of this book. But now I do, so I’ll look out for it, as I DID enjoy CCF! Happy Christmas – I hope Father Christmas brings you lots of books.
Happy Christmas to you too! This book is very different from CCF, but I think you might enjoy it.
Such a lovely book. This is the only Gibbons I’ve read, and I really should try more of her books.
I’m glad I gave her another chance after not really enjoying Cold Comfort Farm. I definitely want to try more of her books now too.
I’m so glad you enjoyed this one – I read it a couple of years ago and really enjoyed it, too https://librofulltime.wordpress.com/2021/01/23/book-review-stella-gibbons-a-pink-front-door/ I am a Cold Comfort Farm fan, too, but I see her other books as almost being by another writer entirely!
Yes, I wouldn’t have guessed this book was by the same author who wrote Cold Comfort Farm, if I hadn’t known! I’m glad you liked it too.
I have this one on my Kindle. I have enjoyed several Stella Gibbons novels over the years and while I did like Cold Comfort Farm it’s not a favourite.
I hope you enjoy this one. It was more to my taste than Cold Comfort Farm.
I’m one of those who loved Cold Comfort Farm but I’ve got on less well with her other books – as others have said, her most well-known book is quite unlike the rest!
Yes, this is so different from Cold Comfort Farm I can see why people who loved that book wouldn’t necessarily love this one!
Glad to hear this one is such a fun read. I really like Stella Gibbons and want to try and read more of her books next year. Fingers crossed. 😀
Wishing you a very Merry Christmas!
Merry Christmas, Lark! I hope you’re able to read more Stella Gibbons books in 2024.