When you see the name Stella Gibbons you immediately think of Cold Comfort Farm, well why wouldn’t you? it’s such a hilarious laugh out loud book. But she wrote so many others, it’s a shame that we all automatically judge everything against Cold Comfort, because her other books are well worth reading too.

Apparently when Gibbons died in 1989 she left behind two unpublished books, you can read about it here.

The Yellow Houses is one of them, she wrote it in the 1970s and it’s well worth reading, I really enjoyed it.

Wilfred is a retired local council official and living in Torford, a town about seventy miles from London in East Anglia, and when the story begins he has been a widower for just six months. He really misses Pat his wife but when their only child Mary runs away from home, leaving just a note saying she is going to London, Wilfred is absolutely bereft. Sobbing on a park bench he realises that someone is standing in front of him, offering him a handkerchief – and so begins his relationship with Mr Taverner, an odd chap who manages to make Wilfred feel better about things.

The next morning Wilfred notices that he can see a lovely newly painted yellow house from his window and it turns out that that is where Mr Taverner lives. When Wilfred gets inside the house it’s like everything that he could ever have wanted, it doesn’t say it in the book but from the description you know that it feels heavenly to Wilfred. Everything begins to get better for Wilfred and Mary gets in touch with him. Mary has only ever wanted to get married and have three children and really her reason for going to London is to give her a better chance of finding a husband. She’s only 17 and had still been at school, but she knows her own mind.

This book has quirky characters and a house where strange things happen – is it haunted? There’s also quite a lot of humour, although it isn’t of the laugh out loud variety. I liked the step back into the early 1970s when decimalisation had just been brought in and there were maxi as well as mini skirts and smelly afghan coats.

I gave it a four on Goodreads but I might have given it 3.5 if that had been possible, it’s definitely better than a three though.