by Thomas Hardy
More a set of sketches of rural Dorset life, than a fully plotted novel. Full of laugh-out-loud humour and beautifully observed description of landscape and village gossip.
This was Thomas Hardy's 2nd published novel. He apparently destroyed the manuscript of his first written novel because the subject was too controversial. The results was this boring novel which follows the pursuit of a man for a woman he seems to have fallen for on sight alone. I wished desperately ...
Very early Thomas Hardy. It's interesting most to see Hardy's progression as a writer. It concentrates on the life in a rural village focused on a choir and on a courtship between a member of the choir and the village school mistress.It is without the relentless bleakness of Hardy's later work and...
I chose to listen to this audiobook as part of what I anticipate will be an ongoing project designed to overcome my long-held prejudice against Thomas Hardy; a prejudice entirely grounded in my strong dislike of Tess of the D'Urbervilles. The experience of listening to this book has been less succes...
Reading this book was like seeing childhood photos of a good friend. I recognized Hardy's minute attention to the natural world, the way the seasons move through the countryside, and his ability to capture a person's movements and individuality so that I feel like I could draw his portrait myself. B...
3.6Who on earth would believe that a Thomas Hardy book could make me laugh outloud? Well, it did, several times. This is a nice book.4-29-11 I loved the first half; not so much the second half. Fancy is a tw-t. i or a, your choice. And Dick is just boring. Still, a "nice" book.
I love Thomas Hardy and this was brilliant.